I used to dread conference networking.
You know the scene. Hundreds of people milling around with lanyards, making small talk, exchanging business cards that'll never be followed up on. The extroverts thriving while the rest of us hover near the coffee station, phone in hand, pretending to check important emails.
The irony? I wanted to meet people. That's why I paid for the ticket. But the system—if you can call it that—was designed for chaos.
The App Graveyard
Every conference tries to solve this with an app. You download it, create a profile, maybe swipe through other attendees like it's Tinder for business. The app sits on your home screen for three days, then joins the graveyard of single-use conference apps we've all accumulated.
The problem isn't the technology. It's the friction.
Nobody wants to learn a new app for a three-day event. Nobody wants to craft yet another bio. And nobody wants to feel like they're "networking"—that word has become synonymous with forced, transactional conversations.
But what if introductions just... happened? Naturally. Without effort.
The Email Epiphany
Here's what I noticed: people still check their email. It's the one universal behaviour that transcends every app, platform, and generation.
What if instead of building another app, we just sent emails?
Not cold emails. Warm, thoughtful introductions. The kind that a great event organiser would make if they had unlimited time and perfect memory of every attendee.
"Sarah, meet Marcus. You're both attending TechConf next week. Sarah is building developer tools and just raised a Series A. Marcus leads DevRel at CloudCorp and advises early-stage teams. I think you'd have a lot to talk about over coffee."
That's it. No app to download. No profile to create. Just a warm intro landing in your inbox before the event even starts.
Building Salma
The technical challenge was surprisingly tractable. Given a list of attendees with bios, an LLM can identify meaningful connections. Not just surface-level matches ("you both work in fintech"), but genuine reasons people should meet.
The hard part was getting the tone right.
Early versions of Salma were too corporate. "I am facilitating this introduction based on your overlapping professional interests." Delete.
Others were too casual. "Yo! You two should totally hang!" Also delete.
The sweet spot was somewhere in between—warm and human, but respectful of people's time. Like a thoughtful mutual friend.
We called her Salma, from the Arabic word for "safe" or "peaceful" (سالمة). Because that's what a good introduction should be: a safe space to meet someone new.
The Opt-Out Problem
One thing I learned quickly: not everyone wants to be introduced to strangers. Some people go to conferences purely for the content. Others are introverts who find networking draining. And some just have a full dance card already.
So Salma needed to respect boundaries.
Every intro email includes a simple opt-out. One click, and you're removed from future matches. No guilt, no questions asked.
What surprised me was how few people opted out. Turns out, most people do want to meet others—they just don't want to do the work of finding them.
Where It Gets Interesting
The magic happens when Salma starts learning.
Did two people you introduced actually meet? Did they connect on LinkedIn afterward? Did they schedule a follow-up? This feedback loop helps Salma get better at matchmaking over time.
The goal isn't to maximise introductions. It's to maximise meaningful introductions. Quality over quantity.
An organiser who runs events regularly will see their Salma improve with each one. The AI learns what kinds of matches work for their specific community.
Beyond Conferences
What started as a conference networking tool has grown into something bigger.
Accelerators use Salma to connect founders in the same cohort. Week one, everyone meets everyone. But by week six, Salma notices that the founder building a dev tool should really talk to the founder who just went through SOC 2 compliance.
Online communities use Salma to turn passive Slack members into active connections. "You've both been asking questions about pricing strategy—want an intro?"
Alumni networks use Salma to reconnect people who haven't talked since graduation but now have more in common than ever.
The thread connecting all these use cases: communities that want their members to connect, but don't have the bandwidth to make introductions manually.
The Name
Salma just felt right. In Arabic, it carries connotations of safety and peace—which is exactly what you want when meeting someone new. A safe space to connect without pressure.
And like Haris, it's a human name. Because Salma isn't a cold matching algorithm. She's more like that friend who always knows someone you should meet.
What's Next
We're working on integrations with event platforms like Luma and Eventbrite, so organisers can set up Salma with one click instead of uploading CSVs.
We're also exploring the idea of "introduction styles"—some communities are formal, others casual. Salma should adapt her tone to fit.
But the core premise stays the same: the best introductions feel serendipitous, even when they're not. Our job is to engineer that serendipity and get out of the way.
The coffee conversations? Those are up to you.