Seta Workshop is a boutique nearshore software studio based in Uruguay. A team of around a dozen engineers, they work as the long-term tech partner for startups, product companies and agencies, most of them in the US and Canada, and are known by their clients for getting involved in the business, asking the right questions and thinking through the product with them, not just shipping tickets. That approach has led to partnerships that last for years, including a long-running one in automotive tech.
The Challenge
Seta had always grown through referrals and through José, their CEO, traveling to North American tech events and meeting as many people as he could. It worked, but it depended almost entirely on him, and sales cycles were long: a lead from a previous trip to Vancouver had taken close to a year to turn into a client.
When José was preparing his second trip to Web Summit Vancouver, Canada's biggest tech event, he wanted to get more out of it than the first time. He had six working days in the city, four of them at the event, and a network there that was still small. Without a growth team or a CRM, his contacts and conversations lived mostly in his own head, which made it hard to plan ahead, follow up consistently or build on what each trip produced.
The Solution
José already did a lot of this himself. He had a small network in Vancouver, he reached out ahead of his trips and he made the most of every event, but there was no system behind it. With five weeks before the trip, we focused on giving that effort more structure, so every conversation had a clear purpose and nothing depended on memory or luck.
We started by mapping everyone he already knew in the city, sorted by how warm each relationship was, so he could reconnect with them first and use the event to grow outward. For new contacts we treated outreach as a way to learn who was most receptive, testing different profiles across LinkedIn, the event's app and the side events around the summit. We then planned the week around those conversations and prepared each one with him, so he knew who he was meeting and what to ask of them. During the trip we worked alongside him in real time, and afterwards we followed up with dozens of people to keep things moving.
The Outcome
In five weeks, a commercial function that ran on instinct became a repeatable playbook, with resources Seta can reuse for every future trip.
15 meetings, 11 of them during the trip
24 prospects and 6 qualified leads
Warm network grew by 170%, from 17 to 46 people
The sprint became the starting point for an ongoing fractional engagement. The trip worked, but a tactic only works within a strategy. What clients value most in Seta, getting involved in the product and the business, is hard to put into a pitch. So we audited their sales cycle, worked with José on where their experience gives them an edge, and are now testing a new positioning and distinctive verticals through outreach and commercial missions. In October, José hosted his own event during SF Tech Week, something we had recommended after Vancouver. Read that case study.
