(FORTUNE Small Business) – It's a great day to get funded! Now move!" Richard Friedman, CEO of event-coordinator firm Mindshare Ventures and the organizer of tonight's high-tech networking soiree, is policing the conference room at New York City's Baruch College. The room has been divided into a long snake of cubicles, each containing two bleary-eyed investors. The entrepreneurs du jour--40 in all--get exactly five minutes to hit the cube and spill their business plan. When the clock hits the fifth minute, Friedman rings a bell and yells, signaling the shift to the next cube to start all over again. The atmosphere buzzes with spittle-inducing fast talk, and many of the entrepreneurs groan when they realize their time is up and they've left out a few key points. But Max Polaner--founder of New York-based Impromptu Gourmet, a cook-it-yourself meal-delivery service--has his routine down pat: Shake hands, sit down, whip out an elaborate press kit of foodstuffs and colorful ice packs. The investors lean in to fondle the goods. They're hooked, and it took only eight seconds.

You've just witnessed a pivotal scene from the new schmooze, which features what entrepreneurs call "smart events." They're smart because they offer 1999's party-craze theme-ology with a substantive educational takeaway, such as feedback on a business plan. "Without events like speed pitching, it's likely that CEOs wouldn't even get a phone call back from investors," says Mindshare's Friedman, whose lightning-quick event was inspired by speed dating, the meet-and-greet-a-date concept recently popularized by HBO's Sex and the City. "It's almost as if we're doing the schmoozing for the entrepreneurs." Well, not quite, but Friedman's not that far off in today's buyer's market. These events are also a CEO's best--and maybe only--shot at networking with potential business contacts, particularly venture capitalists. A year and a half ago entrepreneurs didn't have to do that much work to meet investors. To bring the two uneven sides together today, event organizers--startup-nurturing nonprofits, alumni clubs, and the like--prescreen attendees so that the money folks have sufficient incentive to come out and get a look at a city's best and brightest. Here's how the new schmooze is taking shape and how some companies are navigating it to improve their odds.

Finding the Right Events

The hitch for startups in getting going is that they still have to hear about--and in some cases get invited to--these smart events. While event listings in entrepreneurial-dense metros may be as easy to come by as just subscribing to an e-mail list or online bulletin board, you still have to figure out which provider to trust. That part's not difficult--speak to people at any tech event in New York City, and three out of four will mention, "I heard about it from Bernardo's List!" It's the same with Craigslist in the Bay Area. Both have established their credibility because they've been around long enough to predate the dot-com set. Craig Newmark, a philanthropist, tries to focus his site on tech events that somehow benefit the community, while Bernardo Joselevich, who's had his hand in dot-com startups since 1994, began his Manhattan-centric list as a hobby to forward worthy invitations to his friends. Now he gets wind of more than 60 events per week and weeds them down to 30 for the list. "The events I list have to provide that element of schmoozing--that one meaningful chance to say hello that can provide leads for their business," says Joselevich.

For those regions sans an online hot line, getting in the know can be more difficult. It's best to get involved with the local chapter of a tech trade association, so that you're meeting people within your industry who might be able to pass your name along to another business contact. In Austin entrepreneurs have to break into the tight-knit circle of well-known angel investors for "smart" seed money before ever expecting to raise a cent of venture capital. To do so, they'd better like smoky bars--business in Austin revolves around the city's live-music scene, as seen this past March during South by Southwest, the city's notorious music, film, and interactive trade show-festival. Only here and now could an evening of business-hook-up potential (where 20 tables of entrepreneurs meet a panel of national venture capitalists) be upstaged by the live-music backdrop of country-blues rock star Lucinda Williams.

In places like Atlanta and Portland, Ore., tech entrepreneurs should speak to the business allies they already have--accountants, lawyers, etc.--and network through their connections. "Investors don't even attend events," says Larry Wade, president of the Portland-based Software Association of Oregon, a 12-year-old entity that organizes monthly networking sessions. "They send their legal and accounting friends to do some prescreening." In light of that, local entrepreneurs like Chris James, founder of Portland-based environmental services provider FatEarth, don't look for investors. "I'm looking to pitch my services to other CEOs, in the hopes of gaining a potential partner or customer," he says.

Picking From the Litter

Identifying which soirees will cull the right mix of startup CEOs and investors or partners requires looking for either outstanding substantial educational content or a host with a gold-star reputation. They don't come much more stellar than philanthropic legend Mario Morino, a 30-year tech veteran based in Washington, D.C., who sold his software company to Computer Associates in 1995 for $1.8 billion. His Netpreneur Program (www.netpreneur.org) nurtures technology entrepreneurs and catalyzes the businesses they create, offering an egalitarian alternative to the inside connections that you'd otherwise need to get access to Morino's network of contacts. Entrepreneurs submit a business plan and pay a modest ($25 to $100) registration fee, and even investors have to fill out a submission form before being allowed to attend the far-reaching events that the Netpreneur Program promotes.

"We started out completely virally, finding pockets of entrepreneurs to help that had nowhere to go, until they reached a critical mass," says one of Morino's right-hand staffers, Mary MacPherson, Netpreneur's executive director. "That generated interest from the money people, service providers, etc." People trust the events promoted by Netpreneur not only because of the man behind it but because the entry process signals that they can expect a certain level of business seriousness resonating from the attendees, even if the events are fun, like NVTC Madness, featuring beer, boxing, and Foosball with rival CEOs.

Lacking a golden godfather, entrepreneurs seek out anything that might teach them something in a place likely to promote new business leads. That's why Adam Breslin attended speed pitching. The founder of professional training services provider Excentia, based in Rosslyn, Va., was looking for a forum to practice his business-plan pitch, but he might not have gone had he not been promised that he'd meet a handful of investors face to face. "I wanted to be the only entrepreneur in a room full of venture capitalists!" he says. "This is definitely the closest you can get to that, but we mainly wanted to see how investors reacted to our pitch." He got follow-up meeting requests with two out of eight investors (and is currently in the middle of a three-month-long bout of phone tag with them). "The event was valuable, although it would've been more so if the investors had been required to fill out an evaluation form."

But Breslin did get immediate feedback from some of the Northeast's most touted investors, including Flatiron Partners and Safeguard Scientific, on how to deliver a well-packaged pitch, and at the reception afterward he got to mingle with them in a less intimidating setting. It's this type of drinks-plus-lesson content--found everywhere from the Oregon Entrepreneur's Forum to the Chicago "Internetworking" group BIGfrontier--that keeps entrepreneurs coming back for more, even if they don't end up with a term sheet at the end of the night.

Making a Game Plan

Knowing the nature of the event and who will be there--before the event starts--helps dictate how to schmooze. Terry Hsiao, founder of wireless-messaging-solutions company InphoMatch, based in Herndon, Va., figured that the invitation-only MIT Enterprise Forum event he attended for MIT alums in Washington, D.C., last February would be a good place to go looking for a few good men to round out his company. He hoped that at least a couple of high-tech-lovin' audience members would "get" his complex technology and wouldn't be intimidated to approach him during the post-presentation cocktail hour. Sure enough, a guy from the middle of the audience kept asking Hsiao smart questions about wireless, and he was the one who got to hand in his resume and eventually accept a position at InphoMatch. "The fact that this guy was there just to learn about the technology shows a lot of initiative," said Hsiao, who got his man by sizing up the event.

Sometimes the event dictates the networking protocol, as in the case of Salary.com, whose execs were invited to the Nantucket Conference, a hush-hush, weekend-long event that pulls together New England's entrepreneurial elite, including CEOs, investors, and local press. All the execs knew beforehand was that there'd be state-of-the-market discussions, spontaneous seaside clambakes, and absolutely no PowerPoint presentations. The team had no choice but to go in blind. Richard Cellini, Salary.com's CFO, was tipped off to a potential investor while standing in line for lobster. "I was behind some analyst," said Cellini. "We started sharing our business problems. By the end of dinner he had put me in touch with a well-known venture capitalist." Salary.com and the VC are now in talks about a second round of funding. Johanna Schlegel, Salary.com's director of corporate communications, says, "You have to keep it very nebulous if you're going to make all the possible connections at a conference."

The new schmooze is a necessary evil in stimulating the development of a small tech company. But the good news is that at least today's events are not all lecture and bore--organizers realize that there's an inevitable presence of leftover crazy nostalgia for dot-com mania, and they might not make a match if they don't toss in some fun to draw both sides. "The networking atmosphere has taken a 180-degree turn," said Marc Wallace, founder of D.C.-based SwapDrive, an Internet data-storage site. "While the more social events have become only a forum to share misery, the business-minded functions have become more down to earth. It's a humbler atmosphere, which we like."