I attended Twilio's annual developer conference, Signal, as a boot-strapped startup to gauge its usefulness and potentially find business opportunities. I bypassed security by wearing a fake lanyard and feigning a business conversation with my friend, then walked into the venue, collected business cards, but didn't find any promising leads until I stumbled upon a prominent Silicon Valley competitor's booth. There, I met their CEO who was looking for an on-prem solution to cater to his Fortune 500 clients, which turned out to be our area of expertise, and we eventually developed a major partnership that justified the cost of attending the event.