Between floor space, travel, vendors, and side events, RSAC is one of the biggest line items in a cybersecurity startup’s marketing budget. It’s also four days, April 5 to 8, 2027, when your buyers, investors, and competitors are all within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco.
The companies that get the most out of that week are already deep in planning. Booth space, meeting suites, and the main activation venues for 2027 are already largely booked, and every week you wait narrows your options.
This guide walks through how to plan RSAC 2027 before, during, and after the show, with lessons from Black Hat USA 2026, where our team supported six clients on the ground. Each section also covers how Blue Seedling can help if you’d rather hand that part off.
Before RSAC: set goals and build your plan
Start with what you need from the week
Ask ten people at your company why you’re going to RSAC, and you’ll probably get ten different answers. In our Kill It at Black Hat webinar, we grouped them into four goals that come up again and again:
- Demand gen: pipeline from pre-booked meetings, badge scans, and follow-up.
- Ecosystem relations: time with investors, partners, and analysts who shape your market.
- Brand: awareness and category leadership, often built around a launch or a big announcement.
- Customer engagement: face time with current customers to deepen relationships and drive expansion.
Each goal calls for a different plan on the same budget, so pick your priority before you spend a dollar. Put it in writing, attach measurable KPIs, and get your CEO, CFO, and CRO aligned before anyone books a flight. From there, we build the budget allocation and master timeline around what you need out of the show.
Choose your presence
Then comes the footprint. Most startups land in one of three places:
- A booth on the show floor. The biggest stage for brand awareness and badge scans, and the biggest lift to plan and staff.
- A meeting suite or activation space. A private home base for your best meetings, or a creative space near Moscone that pulls people off the street.
- A meetings-only plan. For founders who come to sell, with a full calendar of pre-booked meetings and none of the floor-space costs.
If you’ve already locked in space, great, we take it from there. If you haven’t, we’ll source and negotiate it with you, though placement depends on what’s still available.
Your concept should bring your unique value to life
Someone walking the floor gives you about five seconds to explain what you do. Before you design anything, write down what you want visitors to say about your company after they walk away. The theme, the experience, and the swag should all tell your product story.
Take Novee, for instance. Its AI trains around the clock and comes back stronger every cycle, so at Black Hat 2026 we turned their 20×20 booth into a working gym with bodybuilders, arm wrestling, gym swag, and a sneaker raffle. The booth brought in hundreds of relevant leads, and the theme kept going after the show through a Gym page on Novee’s website, founder workout videos on LinkedIn, and gym elements at Black Hat Europe.
A strong concept doesn’t need a big budget. Stravito lets companies run market research by talking to highly specific AI personas, so its product is all about personalization. To bring that to life at a Las Vegas trade show, visitors moved through five LEGO stations to build and name a one-of-a-kind minifigure, while signage along the way carried Stravito’s message. The whole activation cost under $1K for 200 kits, and visitors stayed at the booth much longer than they would have otherwise. People loved it so much that Stravito’s team turned it into a staple and has been running the same play at shows for more than a year since.
Sometimes the concept is built around a brand moment. Stairwell used a 10×10 booth at Black Hat to debut its new brand, and the centerpiece was the Malware History Deck, a set of trading cards built from real malware, with the byte data as the artwork and a QR code to each file’s fingerprint.
For more inspiration, see the best booths at Black Hat 2026 and why they worked, and the swag mistakes worth avoiding.
Your best meetings are booked before you land
For most startups, pre-booked meetings carry more of the week’s value than anything on the floor. We estimate that everything visible at a show, from the booth to the parties and swag, drives maybe 20% of your ROI, and the other 80% comes from meetings booked before you land.
Start outreach six weeks out, share one booking link, and aim for 10 to 15 meetings if you’re founder-led, or 20 to 30 for an early-stage team with a small Sales team. For more tactics, see 17 ways to get your sales team to book meetings before a conference.
For our clients, we build a target list, run outreach to book meetings, and manage one shared calendar all week. Every meeting gets a confirmation, a reminder, and a briefing doc so your team walks in prepared.
For instance, Apiiro’s Black Hat week was built entirely around meetings. So, we set up a private meeting suite at Mandalay Bay as the home base for their most important meetings, styled around their “Two storms. One Guardian Agent.” campaign so every visitor stepped into the product story.
Line up your vendors early so your team just shows up
Booth builders, freight, AV, furniture, catering, and print all need sourcing, briefing, and follow-through. So do registration, hotel blocks, and passes for your team. We manage all of it so nothing falls through the cracks. Intezer has relied on this for 3 to 4 events a week across the US and UK, from conferences to executive dinners.
“They really act like they are on the team, taking ownership and handling everything from strategic thinking to on-the-ground execution. I can’t explain how much headache and complexity they’ve taken off my plate, knowing events will run smoothly and outcomes will be delivered.” Lital Dotan, CMO, Intezer
Make RSAC week your biggest news and content moment
RSAC is a busy news week, so the companies that get noticed plan for it. Depending on your goals, that can include a product launch with press and analyst briefings, award submissions with video that makes the most of a win, and founder LinkedIn posts before, during, and after the show. A professional photographer and videographer can capture content from your booth, suite, or event that you’ll use for months.
If you’re launching, announce before the show so you arrive with momentum that RSAC can amplify. That’s how Novee Security approached its launch out of stealth, with Day 1 pipeline ahead of RSAC 2026.
Prep your team before they fly
Before the show, your team gets a know-before-you-go call, office hours, and coaching on goals, talk tracks, and how to work the week. Everyone should leave for San Francisco knowing the meeting targets, the one message you want prospects to repeat, and where they need to be each day.
During RSAC: make the most of every day
Some of the week’s best deals start over dinner
Some of the best meetings at RSAC happen once the sessions end. We’ve run dozens of dinners, happy hours, sporting events, and other side events, so we know which formats bring the right people into the room. At Black Hat alone, that included a private suite at the Sphere and Chandelier Bar tables for Novee, an advisory board meeting at Beauty & Essex for Stairwell, and Israeli Women in Cyber, co-hosted with YL Ventures. We handle everything from the venue and guest list to staffing the night and following up with every guest. For the full playbook, see how to host a conference dinner people actually show up to.
Keep the week on track with an on-site lead and AI
For Blue Seedling clients, On site, a Marketing Lead runs the plan with you, and we also bring back competitive intel on what other companies showed, said, and gave away.
During the week, our AI tools keep everyone on track. At Black Hat, each of Novee’s 20+ team members on site had a personal Slack assistant with a daily agenda every morning and instant answers on booth hours, hotel check-ins, and side events. Plus, automated Slack digests kept a running leaderboard of booked meetings.
After RSAC: turn the week into pipeline
Pipeline is the goal from the first email to the last follow-up
Most field marketing agencies stop at logistics. We start as marketers, and that shapes the whole plan, from the first outreach email to the last follow-up.
It begins before the show, with pre-event promotion built to fill your calendar and bring people to your space. On site, the lead capture setup records every badge scan and meeting for follow-up. After the show, post-event plays put those leads to work while the week is still fresh for your prospects. Most badge scans won’t convert right away, and that’s normal. Treat each one as an account-based marketing touchpoint, and build your nurture plan before you leave for San Francisco.
Then field results and demand gen data come together into a clear read on what worked, what to follow up on, and what to change. Every piece ties back to the KPIs you set at the start, so you can see what RSAC did for your pipeline and decide how to show up at your next event.
One tip: skip the recap blog. Hold a quick debrief with everyone who worked the show, and capture the themes and objections prospects kept raising. That’s raw material for your content plan for the rest of the year.
How Blue Seedling can help you run RSAC 2027
We’ll be at RSAC with several clients, so you get the reach of a much larger events team. That includes a local San Francisco crew, vendors and venues we already know, shared playbooks from Black Hat and past RSACs, and extra hands on site when the week gets busy.
For RSAC 2027, we’re offering three packages, each built around the goals you set:
- Starter Kit. No booth needed. We book your meetings, coach your team, and get you noticed with launch coverage, awards, founder posts, and photos and video.
- Suite. A private room that tells your product story, a full calendar of meetings, and our team on site.
- Booth. Concept, build, lead capture, and a read on what your competitors showed.
You can read more about our field marketing services here.
Lock it in while space is open
Booth space, suites, and the best activation venues are going fast for 2027. Tell us where you are in your planning, and we’ll size the right plan for your goals and budget on a quick call.
