How much research do you do before meeting someone new?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

As a founder, before meeting an investor, another founder, or a potential partner, I usually end up doing the same thing:

→ LinkedIn
→ X
→ Company website
→ Interviews / podcasts
→ Recent news
→ Google

Sometimes that turns into 20–30 minutes of research for one conversation.

But I realized something:

Finding information isn’t really the hard part.

The hard part is figuring out:

What actually matters for this conversation?

So I started asking myself what I actually want to know before meeting someone:

1. Who are they, really?
   Not just their current job title.

2. What have they actually built or done?

3. What are they thinking about recently?

4. Is there a pattern across what they’ve said and done?

5. What should I ask them?

6. What should I not assume?

I kept repeating this workflow, so eventually I turned it into a small product called People Brief.

But the product is actually less interesting to me than the behavior behind it.

I’m curious:

Before an important meeting, what do you personally want to know about the other person?

• Background?

• Recent activity?

• Mutual connections?

• What they care about?

• What they’ve invested in?

• What questions to ask?

Would genuinely love to hear how other people prepare.