You have 30 minutes before you meet someone new. You want to know who they are, what they do, and what you should discuss. The manual process takes 10-15 minutes per person. Multiply that by 3 attendees and you're eating 30-45 minutes of prep time before a 30-minute meeting. There's a faster way — but first, here's what actually works when you do it manually.
Check Their LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is the fastest source of truth. Search their name, find their profile, and skim their headline and recent experience. Look for:
- Current role and company. This tells you who you're actually talking to and what their day-to-day looks like.
- 3-5 most recent positions. Career trajectory reveals priorities and expertise areas.
- Education. A reliable small talk opener when the conversation needs warming up.
- Mutual connections. Social proof that helps with rapport — mention a shared contact naturally.
- Recent activity. Posts, comments, and endorsements show what they're actively thinking about right now.
This takes 2-3 minutes and gives you the bones of who they are. You now know their background and can sound informed about their experience.
Review Your Email History With Them
Open Gmail or Outlook and search their name. Skim recent emails. This is gold because it shows actual context — what you've discussed, what they care about, what previous meetings revealed. You'll see email threads that remind you of agreements, ongoing projects, or pain points they mentioned casually.
This takes 2 minutes and is often more useful than LinkedIn because it shows what they specifically talked about with you. LinkedIn is generic. Email is personal.
Research Their Current Company
Go to their company website. Skim the About page, News or Blog section, and Products/Services. Spend 2 minutes understanding what the company does, their recent announcements, and who their customers are. This gives you context for the meeting — you understand their world.
If they're pre-Series A, check Crunchbase for funding rounds and company stage. If they're public, check recent earnings or analyst reports. A 60-second scan gives you the current state of their business.
Look for Recent News About Them
Google their name in quotes — "Jane Smith" plus their company name. See if they were quoted in press, spoke at a conference, or were mentioned in recent articles. This takes 60 seconds and sometimes reveals recent wins or challenges you should know about.
Check Your CRM
If your team uses Salesforce, HubSpot, or another CRM, search them there. Your team might already have notes from previous meetings, deal stages, or relationship history. You don't have to repeat the discovery process if someone on your team already did the work.
The Time Cost of Manual Research
Here's where the math gets uncomfortable:
- Single person: 10-15 minutes
- Three attendees: 30-45 minutes
- Executive meeting with 8 people: 80-120 minutes
This happens before the actual meeting. You're spending more time preparing than you spend in the conversation. Most professionals have 15-20 meetings per week. If 10 of those involve someone new or someone you haven't talked to in a while, the manual approach costs you 2.5 hours of prep per week — and that's a conservative estimate.
The manual approach works for one meeting. It doesn't scale to a full calendar.
Automate the Whole Thing: AI Meeting Prep
This is where it changes. AI meeting prep tools do all of this in 10 seconds — before you even open your browser. They scan:
- LinkedIn profiles of all attendees
- Your recent email history with each person
- Their company website and recent news
- Public information from web search
- Your Slack history with them (if connected)
Then they generate a one-page brief that shows:
- Who's attending and their background
- Company context and recent news
- Your relationship history — what you've discussed before
- Suggested talking points based on their interests
- Key information from previous meetings
All of this appears automatically when the meeting reminder pops 2 minutes before you join. You spend 30 seconds reading prep instead of 15 minutes digging for it. For a deeper look at how these tools work end-to-end, see the complete guide to AI-powered meeting prep.
The Research Workflow: Before and After
Manual approach: Open 5 tabs, search LinkedIn, skim email, visit company website, Google for news. 15 minutes for one person.
AI approach: Meeting reminder pops with prep already loaded. Click "View Brief." Everything is there — attendee backgrounds, company context, talking points. 30 seconds. Then join.
The difference compounds across your calendar. If 10 meetings per week involve someone you need to research, the manual approach costs 2.5 hours weekly. The AI approach costs 5 minutes.
Remind Handles This Automatically
Remind pulls AI meeting prep from web search, your email history, and integrations with Slack and Gmail. The brief generates 48 hours before each meeting so it's ready when you are. It refreshes hourly to catch last-minute changes, and appears directly in your full-screen meeting reminder.
You get the research done without doing any research. The system starts prepping meetings automatically — no setup beyond connecting your calendar and providing your own AI API key.
The choice is simple: spend 15 minutes researching before each meeting, or spend 30 seconds reading the prep. One scales. One doesn't.