Notes from the Magic Mountain
The Hustle: How First-Timers Secure Private Side-Event Invites
How outreach for a side-event invite actually works.
Last updated: August 2026
Start months out
- Side-event programming gets planned early — hosts are filling panels and guest lists well before January, not scrambling the week itself. Reaching out once you're already in Davos is close to useless for anything beyond what's genuinely open to walk-ins. If you want a real shot, the work happens in the autumn, not on the ground.
Bring an angle
- Hosts have plenty of people with impressive job titles. What they're short on is genuinely different perspectives to fill a specific panel or theme. A message that says who you are gets ignored; a message that says exactly what you'd add to their specific session gets read. Do the work of finding out what they're actually programming before you write to them.
One message is not a strategy
- A single cold outreach rarely lands. A short, genuine follow-up closer to the date, referencing something current rather than simply checking in, reads as normal. The people who get invited to something worthwhile weren't usually first-touch successes; they stayed on the radar over a couple of months.
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