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Overview

Starbridge continuously scrapes public meeting documents and transcripts — school boards, city councils, county commissions, higher ed governing boards, state agencies, and more. Without any filters, you’re looking at tens of thousands of records. The Meetings Bridge applies your search logic to surface only the meetings where your buyers are talking about problems relevant to what you sell. The key insight: people rarely mention vendor names or product categories in meetings until procurement is already underway. Most buying journeys start earlier — when stakeholders describe what’s not working, what’s getting worse, what deadlines or mandates are forcing action. Your Bridge should capture that moment.

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Building your Bridge

The bridge building flow for Meetings follows the same three-phase structure as other bridge types in Starbridge: Describe → Refine → Create.
For a full walkthrough of the bridge building flow — including how to set buyer filters, search phrases, match score criteria, and preview results — see the Bridge Building Flow guide.

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Configuring good search phrases

This is the highest-leverage step. Poor search phrases produce noise; great ones surface buyers who are 6–18 months ahead of a formal procurement.

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Use problem language, not solution language

Your search phrases should mirror how a department head or administrator describes a problem in a meeting - not how a sales rep or product marketer would describe the solution.

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Add up to 30 search phrases

More phrases = richer, more comprehensive results. A single phrase captures one way a problem gets expressed; 30 phrases capture the full vocabulary your buyers use. Think across:
  • Different seniority levels (superintendent vs. department head vs. IT director)
  • Different urgency stages (“we’re looking into” vs. “we can no longer sustain” vs. “we’re required to”)
  • Different consequence types (budget, mandate, audit risk, staff capacity, timeline pressure)
  • Different segments (K-12 vs. higher ed vs. municipal government vs. state agency)

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Fine-tuning meeting scoring criteria

Scoring criteria tell Starbridge how to rank and filter results against your search phrases. Getting this right is the difference between a Bridge that generates signal and one that generates noise.

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Structure your criteria around buying stage

The goal of a Meetings Bridge is usually to catch buyers early — when they’ve identified a problem but haven’t yet issued an RFP. Your scoring criteria should reflect that intent.

Positive criteria

Include signals that indicate the problem exists and the org is moving toward solving it:
  • Explicit description of a pain point or operational problem
  • Urgency language (deadline, audit, mandate, compliance risk)
  • Budget discussion or request for new funding
  • Staff discussing capacity gaps or inability to keep up
  • Leadership aligned on solving a specific problem
  • Committee or task force formed to evaluate options

Negative criteria

Exclude signals that indicate procurement is already underway or complete:
  • An RFP has already been issued or published
  • A vendor or competitor has already been selected
  • A contract has already been signed or renewed
  • The discussion is a retrospective review, not forward-looking
  • The signal is a vendor presenting to the board, not a board discussing a need

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Use criteria to resolve ambiguity in your search phrases

Scoring criteria aren’t just filters — they’re also a place to add context that helps Starbridge disambiguate your phrases:
If you’re searching for ambiguous product names, add clarifying positive criteria like:
“The mention relates to a software or data product called Actionable Insights or AI, used for analytics, reporting, or decision-making - NOT general references to artificial intelligence or machine learning technology.”
If you’re searching for products across many different use cases, clarify with something like:
“References should be specifically about body-worn camera programs for law enforcement personnel — NOT in-vehicle dashboard cameras, fixed building surveillance, or CCTV infrastructure.”
Broad search phrases catch more results but need scoring criteria to sharpen relevance. For example, if searching for “accessibility compliance issues”:Add positive criteria:
“The discussion involves accessibility of digital documents, web content, or educational materials — and the organization describes a gap, risk, or volume problem they need to address.”
Add negative criteria:
“Exclude physical facility accessibility (ADA ramps, parking, building access) unrelated to digital or document accessibility.”
If your team’s sweet spot is early-stage, actionable pipeline:Positive:
“The organization describes a current problem, pain point, or unmet need. Stakeholders express frustration, urgency, or alignment on the need to find a solution.”
Negative:
“The organization has already issued an RFP, completed a vendor selection process, or is discussing contract terms, pricing, or implementation with a specific vendor.”

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Use the preview to calibrate and refine scoring criteria

Before launching your Bridge, open the Preview and deliberately review results across the full scoring range - not just the top results.
1

Review high-scoring results

Confirm these match your intent. If something is scoring high that shouldn’t be, identify what’s triggering it — is it a phrase that’s too broad? A missing negative criteria? Update accordingly.
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Review low-scoring results

This is the most important step most builders skip. Look through results scoring in the bottom half. If you find something that is relevant but scored low:
  • Identify what language in that result makes it relevant
  • Add a search phrase that captures that phrasing
  • Add a positive criteria that describes what makes it a good match
3

Iterate until the scoring feels right

You’re looking for a distribution where high-scoring results consistently match your ICP and buying stage, and low-scoring results are genuinely low priority or irrelevant. Expect 2–3 rounds of iteration before you’re satisfied.

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Enriching your Meetings Bridge

Once your Meetings Bridge is created, enrich your Bridge with columns that make results immediately actionable.

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Relevant Snippets

The Relevant Snippets column is unique to the Meetings Bridge. It extracts direct quotes from the meeting document or transcript that are relevant to your Bridge — based on your description, search phrases, and organization context. When you or a Consumer clicks a Relevant Snippet in the Bridge results, Email Digest, or Feed, you’ll see:
  • The relevant quote
  • The original document (video, audio, or text) at the exact timestamp or page where the snippet appears
This gives your reps direct evidence of what was said, in context — not just a summary.

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Contact columns

Meetings Bridges support three contact options not available on other bridge types:
Web-based contact columns consume credits. Document-based contacts (meeting-sourced) do not. To learn more about credits, visit How do credits work.

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Other useful enrichment columns

Use natural language to describe what you want to know or generate. Common Meetings Bridge use cases:
  • “Score this account 1–10 on buying urgency based on the Meeting content”
  • “Identify the specific budget request or funding discussion, if any”
  • “Return the primary challenge or pain point discussed in the Meeting related to XYZ”
AI Analysis works within the document content - it doesn’t search the web.
Like AI Analysis, but searches the internet for supplementary context. Useful for:
  • “What is this organization’s current technology stack based on public information?”
  • “Are there any recent news articles about budget challenges or leadership changes at this organization?”
  • “Does this buyer have a current contract with [competitor]?”
Checks Starbridge’s internal purchase order and contract data (plus optionally the web) to surface whether a buyer has an existing relationship with competitors you’re tracking - including pricing detail where available.
To learn more about the Vendor Presence column type, visit Vendor Presence

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Next steps: Explore other bridge types

The Meetings Bridge is one of four signal-based bridge types. Each captures a different moment in the buying journey.

RFP Bridge

Monitor and act on relevant RFPs as they’re published. Catches buyers who are already in procurement — useful for late-stage pipeline and competitive positioning.

Purchases Bridge

Identify trends in spend behavior and expiring contracts. Surface buyers whose current vendor contracts are ending — or who have a pattern of spending in your category.

Conference Bridge

Track upcoming conferences and events attended by your target buyers. Use for event-based outreach, speaker tracking, and pre-event prospecting.

Buyers Bridge

Build a static or dynamic list of buyers for targeting or segmentation. Use as the foundation for account scoring or cross-bridge reference queries.