So this is shaping up to be the most intense, amazing SaaStr Annual ever. We’ll have five (5!) stages, with registrations for all sessions, and 200+ sessions with the best founders, CEOs, VCs and more in SaaS.
If you haven’t purchased your tickets yet, here’s a special 20% discount just for our blog readers:
We’ve talked a lot about the Big Unicorn sessions with the CEOs of Atlassian, MongoDB, Coupa, Box, Blackline, Basecamp, The Trade Desk, and more, as well as amazing Bootstrappers sessions with Qualtrics, Mailchimp, Grammarly, and many more.
I don’t want to pick any favorites, but I thought I’d pick out 10 new, super unique sessions I am looking forward to:
- 10 Things I’d Do Even Better: More Lessons Learned, from Marketo founder and retired CEO Phil Fernandez. We had Phil on stage 2 years ago and he was amazing — but he had to hold back a bit as CEO of a public company. Now one of the most honest & frank CEOs in SaaS will be able to share even more of his perspectives and learnings, after Marketo was acquired for $2 billion.
- How to Double Sales in 30 Days — For Real. I’m super happy to have Sam Blond, CRO of RainforestQA do this presentation. I was the first venture investor in RainforestQA and was on the board when Sam joined, and watched him quickly rocket the company past $10m in ARR and adding $1m+ a month in new bookings in his first 60 days on the job. Let’s see how he took the company’s revenues to the next level, and put in practice what he’d already done successful at several other SaaS leaders.
- Why I Now Love B2B More than B2C, Justin Kan. This should be fun. Justin Kan was basically a co-inventor of social media with Justin.TV, Twitch, SocialCam and more, with $1b+ in exits. Why did he go B2B for his next startup? I thought B2C was easier.
- Stories That Sell with Pixar and Prezi. As a long time fan of Prezi, it should be super fun to hear his discussion with the “Chief Storyteller” of Pixar. Too cool.
- Career Advice from Top Female Leaders in SaaS. I love this panel discussion, with Heidi Bullock, CMO of Engagio, Meagan Eisenberg CMO of MongoDB (and one of the best of the best in SaaS), Lesly Young Global SVP of Box (one of our top rated speakers), and Megan Heuer, VP at SiriusDecisions. We’ve had speakers from this A+ panel talk at different SaaStr forums and in different contexts, but having them together on mentoring the next generation could be the best session of all.
- Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer of Adobe, on Creating the First Mile of Product. Scott agreed to join us before recently going back to Adobe as CPO, so this should be an extra-special session. One of the top thought leaders in building world-class web services, this should be special.
- How a VP Sales Took Intacct from $1m in ARR to an $850m Exit. Ok, I’m hacking the title of this session, but Kathy Lord led sales at Intacct since I was a SaaS CEO and few have had the amazing run she did. Let’s hear how she guided Intacct through thick and thin to ~$100m in ARR and a huge exit.
- How to Use an ICO to Raise Money in SaaS. This will be fun. Brian Brackeen, CEO of Kairos will be in the middle or just finishing his ICO. Let’s learn how this really can work in practice for SaaS companies.
- How To Really Build Partnerships, with Aaron Levie CEO of Box and Karen Appelton Page, ex-SVP Box. We’ve had Aaron before (including as our kick-off speaker at the first SaaStr Annual, just days after Box’s IPO), but this will be neat. Karen was his right-hand exec at Box since the very earliest days and I’m super interested to hear what they have learned working together since the very, very beginning to IPO and beyond.
- Winning a Vertical Market with Ara Mahdessian, CEO of ServiceTitan. I first met Ara when he joined us for the L.A. SaaStr Summer Social. Service Titan has gone on to raise several huge rounds and rocket to $50m ARR and beyond, all selling to SMBs the hard way, in tough verticals, from that hotspot of SaaS, Pasadena. Want to learn how to do it really well, the hard way? This should be a really insightful one.
Keep checking our schedule here for more new sessions. Almost all of them are slotted, but a ton are almost 100% confirmed and we can’t wait to announce them!
And see you on February 6!!
