Scaling Better, Faster, and Stronger at SaaStr Scale
Founder Power at SaaStr Annual at Home 2020
In the now-standard in-person to virtual event pivot, SaaStr Annual at Home packed all the founder and VC-led content and networking that attendees have come to know and love from SaaStr into three full days of live, virtual content.
With 70+ sessions, the key takeaways were flying out of our speakers faster than we could transcribe them. Here are some of our favorites, but make sure to join the 300,000+ other viewers who have already committed to learn from the best in SaaS and catch up on all the incredible Annual sessions on SaaStr’s Twitter feed.
SaaStr Enterprise 2020: Getting Real about the Future of Work with SaaStr
Thirty-two of the most innovative SaaS leaders took the virtual stage at the global event SaaStr Enterprise last week on July 29. Our event management team has been collaborating with the SaaStr crew behind the scenes on speaker management and content curation. Lucky for us, this means we scored front row seats to all of the insightful content from the CEOs of Coupa, Gainsight, Algolia, PagerDuty, Box, Front, and more.
The State of the Event Industry 5 Months Into COVID-19
Change is life’s only certainty. This old adage rings more true in today’s times than ever before. And here at cred, we’ve been working hard to not only track these changes but also provide our partners and followers with the best strategies to tackle.
Our CEO, Caitlin provided some great insights into the conference industry in a blog post in May. Two months later, we’re sharing the latest finds based on our State of Events Survey, distributed to our community of 7,000+ leaders in communications, conference planning, and event marketing.
Event 101: How to Host an Effective Virtual Event
Though social distancing has us temporarily apart, virtual events are filling an important niche for thought leadership and community building, and are now undeniably an integral component of the current and future events scene.
We’ve shared ways to build the basic infrastructure of your virtual event—from making game-time decisions about the future of your event to choosing the best platform and equipment—and are now here to share some of the nitty gritty mechanics. Here are our top tips for creating virtual environments that inspire your attendees, speakers, and partners while also meeting your own organization’s KPIs.
Bringing SaaS Overseas at SaaStr Europa 2019
More than 2,000 global SaaS founders, senior leaders, and venture capital firms gathered in the City of Light on June 12-14 for the 2nd Annual SaaStr Europa. Our event management team was onsite curating the two-day agenda with topics focused on how to scale your company’s growth in sales, people, culture, and funding.
Attendees heard from the best and brightest in cloud, including CircleCi, Algolia, Lucidchart, and unicorns like Talkdesk, Doctolib, and Twilio. SaaStr’s mission to “Share. Scale. Learn.” was prevalent throughout the candid and informative speaker sessions, and there were countless opportunities for attendees to meet and engage with SaaS thought leaders, VCs, and like-minded peers. Audience members were able to submit live questions through Slid.o, schedule braindates for more intimate mentoring sessions, and in true Parisian fashion, network with all day rosé.
Highlights from Day 1 included the Equality and Inclusion brunch–where SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin reiterated SaaStr’s mission to promote diversity and encouraged attendees to join in prioritizing more inclusion in the space—and the Ingram Micro and SaaStr’s Startup Pitch Competition. During the hour-long competition, five startups presented pitches in three minutes in front of four investor judges. In the end, $75,000 in funding was awarded to three worthy companies. Process Street secured the coveted, premier title of “Most Likely to Be a Unicorn” and $50,000 to continue their growth.
Funding was a common theme for Day 2. Here are some key onstage takeaways from SaaS celebrity founders:
Raise 30-40% more than you think you’ll need. You’ll need it.
European (and international) startups can thrive without having to move to Silicon Valley, but U.S. partnerships and funding have an undeniable benefit.
Always be fundraising even when you don’t need it.
VCs have very little attention spans. Successful founders need to be salespeople.
Don’t forget that a “not now” can become a “yes” in the future.
According to Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Ventures, there are currently 61 $1B+ private cloud companies compared to 0 in 2018. There is no doubt the industry will continue on this trajectory and we’re excited to keep up with latest SaaS trends and leading innovators.
Didn’t have a chance to make it to Paris? SaaStr Annual is back in San Jose March 10-12, 2020. Join us there and check out our coverage from February!
Igniting Innovation at Equifax Spark
Last week, the events team headed south and joined Equifax for their first ever customer conference in Atlanta. More than 250 of Equifax’s customers and partners from financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies, including SunTrust, Bank of America, Cox, and CreditKarma, attended Spark to learn about the latest trends and industry insights in consumer credit.
In the spirit of sparking inspiration and innovation, Equifax Chief Data and Analytics Officer Prasanna Dhore opened the conference by sharing his personal journey as an immigrant and how he built his credit from zero over the decades. His talk highlighted the information asymmetry that can exist between credit consumers and financial institutions.
Day 1 of Spark continued with the announcement of a new strategic partnership between Equifax and FICO. In today’s information age, Equifax and their partners have more data, technology, and analytics than ever before. More accurate customer views allow for smarter decisions for financial institutions and lenders, and more importantly, better credit access for consumers and a stronger economy for everyone. To accompany this philosophy, the new partnership serves help lenders better understand their consumers.
The rest of the content followed the key themes of data, analytics, and identity. Notable sessions covered the significance of data indicators such as student loan history, employment trends, generational differences; new analytics technologies such as explainable AI that are powering tools to better understand and predict consumer habits and behavior; and the role of identity to combat fraud and mitigate risk.
Artists from the Sketch Effect were onsite to help capture all the key session points and spark-worthy ideas. Other conference highlights included:
Equifax and Moody’s Economic Outlook session: A deep dive into current consumer trends and indicators for 2020
Equifax’s Innovation Studio Expo: Hosted at the Infinity Club of SunTrust Park, data and analytic leaders demoed some of their latest cutting-edge tools and solutions
Erik Qualman’s energizing keynote: Voted the 2nd Most Likeable Author in the World behind J.K. Rowling, Erik offered a guide for leaders in the digital age
After an eventful two days of thought-provoking content and demos, Spark left attendees feeling inspired and empowered to tackle the biggest challenges for our economy and consumer credit.
Interested in planning a customer conference like Spark? Let’s connect at events@credpr.com. See more of our event management here.
