Dan Martell - Business Networking Success - Alex @ SaaStock - Escape Velocity Show #39

00:00:00.000 A friend of mine, he was looking for this entrepreneurial thing

00:00:02.920 to do, come out of investment banking.

00:00:05.120 So I'm going to do, I've seen the early kind of success

00:00:09.000 that you've had with SaaStock.

00:00:10.380 I've got this great idea for a conference around, yeah,

00:00:14.320 I don't know, it was like robo-advising

00:00:16.720 or something like that, and I had no idea what it was.

00:00:19.280 And I said to him, look, I think what you need to do

00:00:21.160 is you've got to do some of the groundwork, right?

00:00:23.440 Maybe you need to write some sort of content,

00:00:26.120 whether it's do a podcast or do some meetups.

00:00:29.000 but he just wanted to just cut all of that out and go straight for the conference.

00:00:34.280 I mean, in the end, he just realized that that just wasn't really viable.

00:00:37.880 So I think if you can build an audience first,

00:00:41.680 then that's kind of the best platform to really do that

00:00:46.060 and move into the conference business.

00:00:48.060 Admission sequence start.

00:00:50.560 Three, two, one.

00:00:59.000 Alex Fuma.

00:01:03.100 What's up, dude?

00:01:03.740 Dan.

00:01:04.280 Dude, I'm pumped to have you on here, man.

00:01:05.840 You run one of the best SaaS events in the world,

00:01:08.880 and you're not paying me to say that.

00:01:10.440 Oh, thanks, Dan.

00:01:11.360 No, I'm definitely not.

00:01:12.660 Yeah.

00:01:13.600 And international, we were just talking about the fact

00:01:15.960 that you've done them, LATAM, Asia.

00:01:19.200 We're in San Francisco right now.

00:01:20.900 Yeah, we did one in New York in summer.

00:01:22.780 Yeah, we got Australia at the end of the year.

00:01:24.660 Whoa, that's going to be fun.

00:01:25.780 Yeah.

00:01:26.340 Dude, talking about jet lag from here.

00:01:28.020 Yeah, a couple of days.

00:01:29.880 Last year, I flew to Australia because we did it last year, December.

00:01:33.100 I was there for four days, and it was brutal afterwards when I go back to the UK.

00:01:37.120 It's intense.

00:01:37.500 Yeah, but somebody actually flew.

00:01:39.640 Actually, Thomas Smale from FE International flew for just 24 hours from Boston to Sydney and then back.

00:01:44.740 What a hustler.

00:01:45.620 Straight up hustle. 0.58

00:01:46.460 Why would you do that?

00:01:46.980 Yeah, don't do that.

00:01:47.820 I actually went to Australia once, and I met a guy.

00:01:50.880 I was there backpacking when I was like 23, and the guy's like, yeah, I flew here for a week.

00:01:54.460 I'm like, dude, if you come for a week, you might as well stay a while.

00:01:57.200 It's far.

00:01:58.160 It's literally the opposite side of the world.

00:02:00.440 How many people go to your, like this year, how many people

00:02:05.000 would you have had at your events?

00:02:06.380 In total, it should be around sort of 6,000 plus.

00:02:08.960 Jeez, that's so cool.

00:02:10.200 So yeah, it's pretty cool, obviously,

00:02:12.460 seeing where we've come from in the last few years.

00:02:15.180 The first SaaS stock, we had just under 700 people there.

00:02:18.140 Really?

00:02:18.440 That was the first in that?

00:02:19.460 The first one, yeah.

00:02:20.260 That's what, three, four years?

00:02:21.220 2016, that was, yeah.

00:02:22.520 OK.

00:02:23.420 And that was global from day one.

00:02:25.700 I thought it was just going to be a European SaaS conference.

00:02:28.200 And was that in Dublin?

00:02:29.260 That was in Dublin, yeah.

00:02:30.420 And people bought tickets from Brazil, from Australia.

00:02:33.340 They flew in, and it just kind of showed the need that people really kind of wanted to

00:02:37.620 come and learn and hang with their peers and bring everyone together.

00:02:41.860 And we just did that.

00:02:42.780 We just brought all the SaaS founders together.

00:02:44.680 And now this year with the six conferences, it'll be 6,000 plus.

00:02:49.400 So the big one is the one in Dublin, which you will be speaking at again this year, October

00:02:54.560 14th to 16th.

00:02:55.700 Then I'll have about 4,000 this year.

00:02:59.780 So last year was just under 3,000, 4,000 this year,

00:03:03.380 like more than 50 countries coming.

00:03:05.140 So it's great to see how international SaaS is

00:03:07.760 and folks coming in from Mexico, Colombia, Singapore,

00:03:11.900 Seoul, et cetera.

00:03:12.980 It's really cool.

00:03:13.880 What's changed from a content point of view?

00:03:17.240 What do you feel like the markets, like three years ago,

00:03:21.260 content topics versus today?

00:03:23.200 Yeah, I would say three years ago,

00:03:25.080 And that's such a short space of time, right?

00:03:26.940 So there's nothing.

00:03:27.720 Yeah.

00:03:28.140 The fact that you've created that in three years is awesome.

00:03:31.020 What I saw three years ago when we were starting out,

00:03:34.380 there was this whole thing, OK, like, oh, there's

00:03:36.420 SaaS in Europe, great European SaaS companies.

00:03:38.680 And as soon as you get to 1 million in ARR or Series A,

00:03:42.900 you need to move to San Francisco and do the Silicon Valley

00:03:45.820 Playbook, right?

00:03:46.640 And that's what everybody was talking about.

00:03:49.100 That's what I was reading.

00:03:52.020 And a lot of the European companies were doing that.

00:03:53.840 I think now, in such a short space of time,

00:03:56.060 probably because of technologies like Slack and Zoom

00:04:00.080 and some others, it's enabled, obviously,

00:04:03.500 great companies to do remote work.

00:04:05.660 It's enabled, I think, European companies

00:04:08.080 to actually say, well, we can have better communication

00:04:10.240 with VCs in the US or whatever.

00:04:13.080 But I've seen so many companies that just stay in.

00:04:15.340 And there's an advantage to have that

00:04:16.960 if you can get your cost structure a lot cheaper.

00:04:19.100 Exactly.

00:04:19.600 I mean, it's not cheap in San Francisco anymore.

00:04:21.640 It's not cheap.

00:04:22.260 People are getting their engineers in Buenos Aires

00:04:24.680 or wherever, right?

00:04:25.680 And so now we're just seeing that this Silicon Valley

00:04:29.640 playbook, you have to move to the US,

00:04:31.500 is now not necessarily the hottest topic

00:04:34.980 or that we were seeing three years ago.

00:04:37.300 And that was on the content schedule,

00:04:38.980 like how to move to San Francisco or the Silicon Valley.

00:04:41.640 Yeah, that's what the VCs were talking about specifically.

00:04:46.300 And also a lot of the founders, that's

00:04:48.500 the journey that they were in at that stage.

00:04:50.100 It's like, get to a certain scale.

00:04:51.840 You have to move to the US to kind of crack it.

00:04:54.120 And now people are saying, you don't have to, right?

00:04:56.820 Is there more content around managing remote teams

00:04:59.160 and distributed teams?

00:04:59.960 We're doing a lot of content on remote stuff

00:05:02.600 sort of this year.

00:05:03.160 For sure, man.

00:05:04.060 Slack, Zoom.

00:05:06.540 These tools have just transformed the way people are.

00:05:08.720 Yeah, and you've got companies like InVision app, right?

00:05:11.720 They're, what are they?

00:05:12.640 I mean, they're the unicorn, probably 1,000 people,

00:05:16.640 like remote first company.

00:05:18.320 And Ryan Burke, actually, from InVision,

00:05:20.400 he's SVP of sales, building up their international business.

00:05:25.680 And when I first met him and actually

00:05:27.680 had him on my podcast, the SAS Revolution show,

00:05:31.520 he was saying, yeah, we're like 400 people and we're all remote.

00:05:34.060 And I was like, huh?

00:05:35.020 Really?

00:05:36.120 How does that work?

00:05:36.900 And he kind of explained how that works.

00:05:38.940 And now actually, and again, he was actually

00:05:41.340 saying that VCs at the time, a lot of them,

00:05:44.520 they wouldn't back remote companies and saying,

00:05:46.800 you have to have.

00:05:47.340 It's true.

00:05:47.880 There was a, yeah.

00:05:49.000 You have to have an office, and they're all now

00:05:51.460 coming round to the fact that actually.

00:05:53.200 Well, you've got GitHub.

00:05:53.800 You've got the automatics.

00:05:55.240 You've got so many examples of companies that,

00:05:57.640 and again, just because it's more cost effective.

00:06:01.260 You've grown a lot, so you've built your team.

00:06:03.400 Has everybody distributed?

00:06:05.140 No, everybody.

00:06:07.360 Initially, we were remote, but this

00:06:09.040 was when we were only three people.

00:06:10.360 We didn't have an office.

00:06:12.200 But now we're 22 people.

00:06:14.600 We're almost all in the London office.

00:06:18.040 We do have somebody in Portugal, and we have a contractor

00:06:21.640 in the US, and one in Asia as well.

00:06:26.240 But apart from that, everybody's in the London office.

00:06:28.700 And as we're saying, the costs of having an office in London,

00:06:32.980 it's real money, and I'm sometimes thinking,

00:06:35.020 well, we should be remote as well, perhaps.

00:06:36.920 Everybody stay at home.

00:06:40.240 Fun fact, you know the individual.

00:06:41.740 Who is the most popular YouTube SaaS stock talk ever given?

00:06:47.020 Isn't that Patrick Campbell?

00:06:48.020 It is, yeah.

00:06:48.520 That's his favorite thing to tell me.

00:06:50.520 He's like, guess who has the most popular talk ever?

00:06:52.520 So I had Patrick on the show.

00:06:54.940 So then I was like, OK, I'm going

00:06:56.240 to beat him just by running Google YouTube ads.

00:06:58.420 But yeah, I don't know how he's done it.

00:07:01.100 There's some sort of viral thing going on there.

00:07:03.140 He knows what he's doing.

00:07:04.020 He's got an email list.

00:07:05.140 It's like 20,000, 30,000 views right now.

00:07:08.220 And the other ones, the good ones,

00:07:10.500 are like 1,000 or 2,000.

00:07:12.740 I mean, he's just so data driven.

00:07:14.660 It's good content.

00:07:16.680 Who are you excited for this year?

00:07:19.660 I mean, first of all, I'm like, obviously,

00:07:21.440 just can't wait for the conference itself.

00:07:23.060 I've been pumped for it for the last few months.

00:07:25.800 But this year, it's great to see speakers like Girish

00:07:30.060 Mathuributhum, who's the CEO of Freshworks.

00:07:33.020 So they're like a competitor to Zendesk.

00:07:36.760 But they're a unicorn.

00:07:39.040 And again, he's based in, I think, Chennai or somewhere

00:07:43.600 in India.

00:07:44.100 So he's built this unicorn.

00:07:46.140 whilst they are international, you know, being, uh, remaining in the HQ, uh, in India, we actually

00:07:52.000 had him booked in 2017, um, before they had reached kind of unit unicorn status and he had a bad back

00:07:58.620 so he couldn't come. So this year, you know, he's coming back. But, um, again, it's nice to just not

00:08:03.660 have like either us or European, you know, kind of well-known founders. I mean, I think he's pretty

00:08:08.840 well known within the industry. Uh, but you know, we're, SAS stock is a very global conference.

00:08:14.000 you know we're trying to have that uh the representation of the audience you know also

00:08:18.180 on stage as well so we have people like gearish coming in from india with people like eric santos

00:08:23.400 from uh rd uh rd station which is like a big sas company in in brazil so i think they've also just

00:08:30.880 reached uh unicorn status sort of recently as well with their latest round of funding um claire

00:08:36.440 hughes johnson coming over from stripe uh rory o driscoll from scale venture partners he's a

00:08:42.480 He's a great character.

00:08:44.600 So he'll be very excited to see.

00:08:46.980 How do you recruit your speakers?

00:08:48.700 Used to be me.

00:08:50.460 And it used to be my kind of wish list.

00:08:52.840 And I'd love doing it.

00:08:53.840 It's like I often say it's-

00:08:55.780 It's kind of probably why you created the event.

00:08:57.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:08:58.320 But it's like the developer CEO that gives up coding

00:09:03.240 because they have to.

00:09:05.200 I was the CEO that had to kind of give up recruiting speakers,

00:09:09.340 which is kind of our product, a big part of our product.

00:09:12.460 But I love doing that.

00:09:13.720 And he's like, here's my wish list.

00:09:15.040 And then reaching out to them.

00:09:16.120 And yeah, Dez Train has agreed.

00:09:18.280 And Christoph Janss has agreed.

00:09:19.600 And you kind of had that knock on effect.

00:09:21.220 So if you get a few good speakers,

00:09:23.840 then they see who else is speaking.

00:09:25.300 They're like, OK, well, if Dez Train is speaking,

00:09:27.140 then that's going to be good enough for me.

00:09:29.760 So I did that for the first couple of years.

00:09:31.520 And then I got some external help.

00:09:33.500 I wasn't naive enough to think that having never run a SaaS

00:09:37.380 business, and I'm not a VC either, I'm not in the trenches.

00:09:40.900 So I don't know 100%, you know, how tough it is to run a SaaS business or actually, you know, everything about sales, marketing, customer success.

00:09:50.800 So I got some experts in with a steering committee, a couple of, you know, a couple of VCs, a couple of operators as well.

00:09:59.040 And then they would look at the agenda that I was putting together and give advice.

00:10:02.040 And we pulled that together.

00:10:04.920 Then I just found, obviously, the more tasks, I was also doing sales.

00:10:08.800 I'm doing marketing and, you know, everything else.

00:10:11.520 And the agenda was just kind of one of those things where I'd do a little sprint in January

00:10:16.080 and I'd maybe get like 20, 30 speakers confirmed and I'd do nothing on it for the next few months.

00:10:22.340 Because once you get those, you feel like I've got a base.

00:10:24.580 I've got a base, yeah.

00:10:25.540 Because the event's in November?

00:10:27.420 It's in October, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:29.120 So I'd do a sprint in January and by February I'd have like 30 speakers confirmed

00:10:32.760 and, you know, maybe put like 20 up there and then add a few in kind of afterwards.

00:10:36.900 uh but then yeah i just found like the then we would have the maybe may was the kind of point

00:10:42.460 where we wanted to do the first draft of the agenda and you know put that kind of live and

00:10:46.480 show you uh people you know what's happening because people like seeing who's speaking but

00:10:50.860 they also want to know a lot of people like you know what are they what are they going to learn

00:10:54.280 about right what are the particular specific topics that um and i was just becoming a bottleneck in

00:10:59.760 that i was like i've got so much to do um i wouldn't give it as much time as it deserves

00:11:05.760 And then I just thought, like, when we got into year three or after year two into year three, so I need, you know, somebody kind of professional to do this.

00:11:14.540 And that's when I got introduced to Emma, Emma Pierce.

00:11:19.240 She is.

00:11:20.460 She's now.

00:11:21.380 Amazing.

00:11:21.860 Yeah, she's great.

00:11:22.560 So good.

00:11:23.120 She's like, Dan, who else can I get?

00:11:24.760 And I'm like, okay.

00:11:26.120 Yeah.

00:11:26.620 Yeah, so she's great.

00:11:27.180 And when I met her before we hired her and she just explained everything.

00:11:30.220 She did it where? 0.98

00:11:30.760 Money?

00:11:31.040 Money 2020.

00:11:31.840 Yeah.

00:11:32.020 which is like you know the biggest fintech sort of conference uh globally and she explained the

00:11:37.140 whole process and i was like i don't do any of this yeah you're like wow yeah that's how it's

00:11:40.980 supposed to look this is what the professionals do let's let's do that and um and again it was

00:11:46.660 like she she hadn't worked in sas before but you know she'd been running content for a fintech 0.99

00:11:51.780 conference and like she was super smart and i was like i'm pretty confident that that was the only

00:11:56.100 weakness i was pretty confident you know what she's gonna get this and she just picked it up

00:11:59.460 She's on the phone every day speaking to loads of founders and VCs, and she's

00:12:03.240 learning more than I could learn.

00:12:05.220 She gets it.

00:12:06.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:07.220 So that's great.

00:12:08.220 So that's been a big help.

00:12:09.220 It's one of those, over the years, the number of tasks or duties that I've delegated to

00:12:15.180 somebody else in terms of I was doing the sales, I was leading marketing, I was doing

00:12:21.960 the content.

00:12:22.960 But now, I'm actually probably more comfortable now saying,

00:12:28.960 I am, you know, I am a CEO, I'm looking, you know, at the whole company at the dashboard,

00:12:34.400 you know, at the numbers. Whereas the first couple of years, you know, you're a founder,

00:12:38.880 yeah, you're doing it all when I wasn't comfortable with the term CEO, you know,

00:12:42.560 back then, but I'm kind of growing into it a little bit.

00:12:46.160 What have you learned? I mean, what's interesting about events is back in the day,

00:12:49.920 I think my first tech event was like future web apps. Like Ryan Carson. And it was interesting

00:12:56.240 watching their, you know, build something small into big, like what was the motivation for you

00:13:01.840 to start SaaStock? Yeah. Um, motivation. I mean, I've always been entrepreneurial.

00:13:07.760 Was that your first, first event ever in your whole life? Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really?

00:13:12.880 Yeah. I didn't organize dinners or I mean, okay. So I, I, I did some meetups, but as part of the

00:13:19.520 kind of run up to SassDoc.

00:13:21.560 But I'd never, I think for one company, when I was a sales guy,

00:13:25.980 we organized a small event for like 50 of our customers

00:13:29.900 or something like that.

00:13:30.720 Steak dinner.

00:13:31.340 And then we did something like virtual golf

00:13:33.500 afterwards and things like that.

00:13:34.820 But I had done that, but that was it.

00:13:38.000 So I didn't count myself as having experience

00:13:41.000 in events and conferences.

00:13:42.200 And actually, that was when I kind of stumbled into SassDoc

00:13:46.580 because I was doing this SassBlog.

00:13:49.040 I was doing the podcast to then supplement the blog.

00:13:51.820 This is back in 2015.

00:13:53.720 What I had then was the drive to actually,

00:13:57.740 I didn't want to be a sales guy all of my career.

00:14:01.700 And I wanted to do something entrepreneurial.

00:14:03.740 So I just started experimenting, doing

00:14:06.640 some things on the side.

00:14:08.160 Like, OK, I've never done a blog before.

00:14:10.920 Let's do a blog around SAS.

00:14:13.880 And that's SAScribe.

00:14:14.840 And that's SAScribe.

00:14:15.920 And, yeah, and then, like, I soon supplemented that with the podcast.

00:14:19.560 And I think just, again, like, the timing, like, the podcast,

00:14:22.220 it was pretty much the first sort of B2B SaaS podcast back then in 2015.

00:14:27.140 I remember Aaron Levy was doing founder calls with,

00:14:31.940 and he had, like, Mikkel Sveni and, you know, Jeff Lawson from Twilio on.

00:14:35.660 But I think he sort of realized running a public company

00:14:38.760 and doing a podcast was, like, it was a lot of his time.

00:14:41.620 So he only did a couple of episodes,

00:14:42.800 and that, you know, freed up the market for me

00:14:45.140 for a short space of time.

00:14:47.680 And so had some great guests on it.

00:14:49.460 And he, like, you know, had a podcast with no audience.

00:14:52.840 And my first guest was Mark Roberge, right?

00:14:55.020 And it's like, he didn't,

00:14:56.580 I don't think he actually asked the question,

00:14:57.900 like how many listeners, he had his book out.

00:15:00.040 So that was why I kind of reached out to him.

00:15:02.560 I was like, you got your book out?

00:15:03.900 Want to be a guest on my show?

00:15:05.200 He was like, yeah.

00:15:06.300 And actually for two years-

00:15:08.400 He didn't ask how many subscribers.

00:15:10.380 But for two years, that was the most listened to

00:15:12.600 episode because people just knew who he was. And that kind of gave us that, that boost, that spike,

00:15:17.180 because we were getting people like Mark Roberge, Joey McCabe, you know, Byron Dieter, et cetera,

00:15:22.120 were coming on. And, um, you know, as, as, and I was just doing this in my bedroom,

00:15:26.300 anchor interviewer, the anchor speaker, once you got that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So then I

00:15:30.480 could reference them. And, uh, so we, we, I was doing the, the blog, the podcast started doing

00:15:35.520 SAS meetups because nobody else was doing them, um, at the time in the UK. And then I did, I did

00:15:42.440 a couple in the uk like 120 people came to the first one uh it was a really good community

00:15:47.380 like people like hannah chaplin from receptive which got acquired by by pendo and um so a lot

00:15:53.940 of people that came to that first one you know still like i'm now like friends with or they come

00:15:58.880 to sastock or you know they're sastock local city leaders um uh and uh i did some in dublin did some

00:16:06.380 in berlin and i was like this is great but i'm trying to get this community together and there

00:16:12.060 isn't a community like that's being pulled together in Berlin, but there's enough, you

00:16:16.100 know, entrepreneurs there. And there is, there wasn't really a SAS community in Dublin and

00:16:20.260 there wasn't really a SAS community in London. So I'm doing it all on somebody, it doesn't

00:16:23.720 really scale. So it's pretty difficult to keep doing these meetups, uh, even, you know,

00:16:28.640 doing like a couple of months. Um, and then I was just, everybody that I met though, this

00:16:32.820 was all the great customer development sort of work where they're saying, look, you know,

00:16:36.500 why don't you do a conference, you know, in, in Europe, we bring everybody together. You're

00:16:40.920 the person to do it um because you're taking the initiative and i was like well yeah i i really

00:16:46.920 like the idea and i'm looking for i you know i was really i wanted i wanted to do it right

00:16:52.040 but then i said well i don't have a i don't have an experience in in conferences or events so

00:16:57.320 eventually i kind of thought well do you know what so many people like are asking for this

00:17:01.800 like surely it can't be rocket science if i get the right people around me um and that was kind

00:17:06.760 kind of the plan.

00:17:07.420 And it was much harder than I expected.

00:17:10.240 And was that first event two days, three days?

00:17:12.220 What was the first one was, it turned into three days.

00:17:15.920 But it was the SaaS City workshop.

00:17:18.260 So it had that concept from the beginning.

00:17:20.680 In fact, it was just three workshops the first year.

00:17:26.020 And then in SaaS Doc, it was just one day, two track.

00:17:32.200 I remember we booked David Cancel.

00:17:35.000 came over and he spoke because he confirmed really late he spoke on the second stage like right at

00:17:40.040 the end and he was like oh you put me in the in the small room on the small room but i was like

00:17:44.920 well you know if you confirm right at the end i did ask you you know for a whole year yeah but um

00:17:49.960 but he he was fine with that and then we um then we had society the first iteration of it you had

00:17:55.880 that all year one yeah i had that all year like crazy vision yeah yeah those are all like still

00:18:01.320 pillars yeah yeah exactly and so yeah so so we had that and we've kind of you know they they've

00:18:07.160 evolved um but that was kind of the idea from the beginning was like well how do we you know really

00:18:13.160 cater for for everybody and differentiate ourselves and um so yeah so had that from from

00:18:19.000 the beginning and those are all part of the the sas stock experience really what would you say

00:18:23.160 to somebody that's trying to kind of build a network and use events as a way to do it like

00:18:29.000 Like, what's the lightest first step?

00:18:30.760 Like, what would you tell them to do if somebody's like,

00:18:32.340 hey, obviously I don't want to do a SaaS doc.

00:18:34.400 Like, I just want to, you know, because you always hear,

00:18:37.200 like, hey, build a platform.

00:18:39.240 You know, maybe it's a podcast.

00:18:40.440 Maybe it's, you know, so I love the live.

00:18:42.320 I'm, you know, we're more extroverted.

00:18:45.420 We like talking to people face to face.

00:18:48.280 What's the easiest form of that?

00:18:49.980 Yeah, I think you've got to put in the groundwork, right?

00:18:53.800 So it's, you've got to build this audience.

00:18:55.960 And I had sort of done that inadvertently

00:18:58.880 without thinking about the conference.

00:19:00.940 I was doing audience and community building for.

00:19:04.840 Through the content initially?

00:19:06.460 Through the content, the podcast.

00:19:08.860 Like, I had a Slack channel for SaaS founders.

00:19:12.880 So they had about 500 founders on that,

00:19:16.780 sort of back in the day.

00:19:18.840 And then doing the meetups, right?

00:19:21.960 So it could be like a Facebook group, could be whatever.

00:19:24.580 Exactly.

00:19:25.080 So you've got to build that audience, right?

00:19:26.940 And I remember a friend of mine, he

00:19:28.840 was looking for this entrepreneurial thing

00:19:30.480 to do, come out of investment banking.

00:19:32.680 So I'm going to do, I've seen the early kind of success

00:19:36.540 that you've had with SaaS stock.

00:19:37.940 I've got this great idea for a conference around, yeah,

00:19:41.880 I don't know, it was like robo-advising

00:19:44.280 or something like that, and I had no idea what it was.

00:19:46.860 And I said to him, look, I think what you need to do

00:19:48.700 is you've got to do some of the groundwork, right?

00:19:51.000 Maybe you need to write some sort of content,

00:19:53.700 whether it do a podcast or do some meetups,

00:19:56.580 but he just wanted to just cut all of that out

00:19:59.640 and go straight for the conference.

00:20:01.420 And I mean, in the end, he just realized

00:20:03.500 that that just wasn't really viable.

00:20:05.360 So I think if you can build an audience first,

00:20:09.780 then that's kind of the best platform to really do that

00:20:13.640 and move into the conference business.

00:20:15.700 And you can see, I think, a lot of people

00:20:19.700 who've followed that path,

00:20:21.820 You know, they've got some good conferences behind them.

00:20:24.560 I read a book by, I think it's Joe Palluzzi, it's called

00:20:27.920 Content Inc, and that's what he did.

00:20:31.940 He just built this audience and then had this conference,

00:20:34.480 and then it got acquired for like $17 million or something

00:20:36.980 like that. 0.99

00:20:37.480 Damn. 1.00

00:20:37.980 Is that your trajectory? 0.99

00:20:39.020 Like, is that what you want to do at SaaStock?

00:20:40.660 What's the?

00:20:41.260 Yeah, no, I mean, like, we're sort of at this,

00:20:44.180 I feel like there's such this massive opportunity

00:20:46.220 that we're real, like, early, you know,

00:20:47.900 we're still quite early in SaaS, even though you've

00:20:50.080 had Salesforce around for 20 years, or whatever it is.

00:20:53.460 So it's just like almost every startup

00:20:57.040 and almost every company is now becoming

00:20:59.420 SaaSified and becoming a SaaS company.

00:21:02.520 So each year, there are just thousands and thousands

00:21:05.500 and thousands more SaaS companies.

00:21:07.240 And they're all keen, hungry to learn.

00:21:09.640 And that's why tomorrow, we've got 500 here at SaaStock West

00:21:14.440 Coast.

00:21:15.460 So I think we've been riding this wave with SaaStock,

00:21:19.240 you see the trajectory from 700 to, you know, well, 6,000 across the globe this year.

00:21:26.380 And I think that's just going to continue to go like that.

00:21:28.620 So from the conference point of view, we're just at a really good, I think, you know,

00:21:33.580 point in time where we launched, you know, very early to market in respect that there

00:21:38.920 wasn't, you know, a SaaS conference in Europe, you know, at the time.

00:21:42.020 In fact, there were only, you know, two in the world, you know, at the time.

00:21:45.180 Now it's actually good to see that there's a SaaS conference that's happening in Prague tomorrow.

00:21:51.440 There's one that's happening in Paris tomorrow.

00:21:55.020 We have ours in Dublin.

00:21:56.900 There's conferences in the US, et cetera, all over.

00:21:59.960 So the actual ecosystem is really growing.

00:22:03.940 So from a conference perspective, I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

00:22:09.360 Then there's discussions that we kind of have internally

00:22:12.020 about the network that we have and the business that we have

00:22:17.400 and supplementing that with perhaps sort of different products,

00:22:20.140 whether it's accelerators or funds or this sort of thing.

00:22:24.320 So these are all very interesting.

00:22:28.100 And what we said sort of right now is that we just need to kind of focus

00:22:31.560 on the conference business and just ensure that we're like a well-oiled machine.

00:22:36.120 You know how to do it, yeah.

00:22:37.060 And once we're, you know, and again, like, you know, we're into year four, we probably should be a well-oiled machine and we're getting there, but it's just each year it's changed.

00:22:46.800 And now as we've got six conferences, you know, it means that you need to be super good at, you know, having internal processes and just being able to kind of, you know, run all of these kind of, you know, at a similar time from a marketing perspective and sales perspective.

00:23:02.320 So once we've got that kind of down, then I think you can say, OK, well, let's look at, you know, what is the next thing?

00:23:09.400 We did launch SaaS.local this year, which is effectively a similar easy way to kind of describe it, a bit like startup grind type model.

00:23:17.360 OK.

00:23:17.700 So local chapters.

00:23:19.880 Local chapters.

00:23:20.560 So actually looking at the grassroots where we came from and, you know, the SaaS meetups, which kind of stopped after I went, you know, well, full time on SaaS stock because that was where the revenue was.

00:23:34.160 And, yeah, we probably did a couple of meetups after the first SaaS stock.

00:23:39.220 But then we just focused on on the main conference.

00:23:41.560 But actually, you know, the important thing is that you should continue, I think, to do the community building and the grassroots stuff.

00:23:48.220 And so we'd left that for a bit.

00:23:50.960 And then we realized, like, I think one year,

00:23:53.720 we realized, you know, we've got this big conference in Dublin.

00:23:56.860 And between conferences, whether it was 2017, 2018,

00:24:00.700 we actually hadn't done anything in the community in Ireland,

00:24:04.780 in Dublin in that year.

00:24:06.280 And we're like, we probably should have, right?

00:24:09.580 And so now, anyway, with Sasslot Local,

00:24:12.680 we have the, I think, the ability to do this at scale.

00:24:16.580 We've got the resources, Gabriel's like behind, you know, behind this and able to kind of recruit and support, you know, local kind of city leaders and empower that.

00:24:29.440 And I think we've got about 20 at the moment.

00:24:31.900 We had like 10 happening this month alone in Helsinki, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, you know, so it's really great to see.

00:24:43.260 And again, it's showing that there is such this hunger and demand

00:24:46.140 and getting about like close to 100 people per event.

00:24:49.420 No way.

00:24:49.980 Yeah.

00:24:50.260 Showing up.

00:24:50.780 Yeah.

00:24:51.180 So there's a hunger for it.

00:24:52.940 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:53.820 And so like, you know, what if we can have 150 chapters, you know,

00:24:58.220 going on all the time, all the time.

00:25:00.060 So it would be pretty, pretty powerful thing.

00:25:02.060 How do you mess things up as an event organizer?

00:25:04.780 Yeah.

00:25:05.580 That's a good question.

00:25:06.220 Because I mean, you've seen all these events come and go.

00:25:09.180 Like when you talk to the team about like, hey, there's these certain things

00:25:13.100 we need to get right because this is how do you mess things up yeah yeah multiple ways i mean like

00:25:19.980 the first year for instance like we we almost run out of money a number of times right and again

00:25:25.820 i think a large part was inexperienced and we had a 12 mark uh 12 month kind of uh i was yeah

00:25:32.620 it was 12 months between launching the website and signing our first sponsor and starting the speaker

00:25:39.020 recruitment to the actual conference right so september september 2015 to october uh sorry

00:25:46.300 september 2016. so managing the cash flow it's like okay i can put a thousand dollars or a thousand

00:25:52.540 euros deposit down and then you know get a a sponsor in for like 15 grand or whatever uh and

00:25:59.740 then you have like a bad month and you're like okay then you know what what do i do now um so

00:26:05.260 So there were a lot of times where I was like, oh,

00:26:09.400 we're just about to run out of money.

00:26:11.380 No, got a deal in.

00:26:12.400 We're fine.

00:26:13.420 And then carrying on.

00:26:14.620 And again, that probably extends outside of the events

00:26:18.220 business, right?

00:26:18.760 Just a cash flow in year one for many startups.

00:26:22.880 There were a lot of costs because of my experience

00:26:24.880 that I didn't know.

00:26:25.780 I bought into a lot of things because I wanted our event.

00:26:30.380 When you're this founder and you want your event to be the best

00:26:33.140 and look the best and you've got all these great ideas,

00:26:35.260 Sometimes I think I got a little bit carried away and maybe even-

00:26:38.440 Expenses, you mean?

00:26:39.140 Yeah, just like probably didn't have to spend as much on the staging as I did.

00:26:44.100 I would think I like the, you know, I have a lot of respect for the partners that we work with.

00:26:49.620 But, you know, perhaps sometimes they necessarily didn't view me as here is a, you know, a solo entrepreneur in the first year of business that probably doesn't have as deep pockets as Facebook.

00:27:00.800 Yeah.

00:27:01.400 Yeah.

00:27:02.900 But we'll still try and sell them an expensive solution.

00:27:04.940 And often they go, here's an expensive solution.

00:27:07.760 It's awesome. 1.00

00:27:08.480 It's also, look at this shit thing here. 0.99

00:27:10.280 You could also have that. 1.00

00:27:11.060 You could do that too, man.

00:27:11.840 I want this.

00:27:12.340 I want this.

00:27:12.740 Yeah.

00:27:13.640 And so I bought a lot of stuff, right?

00:27:16.400 And bought, as in like bought their solution,

00:27:19.580 or actually bought physical things to think about next event.

00:27:22.260 Yeah.

00:27:22.760 We bought.

00:27:23.260 So the booths that we have, and I think you've seen the booths

00:27:26.840 that we have at Sastoc.

00:27:27.800 And I'm still probably making the same mistake.

00:27:30.160 But they're like handmade, kind of like wooden booths.

00:27:34.180 And they cost like several thousands each.

00:27:37.720 And then we put them in storage.

00:27:38.980 Yeah, totally.

00:27:39.580 And you can have a much kind of cheaper, cost-effective offering

00:27:46.360 that is similar kind of size.

00:27:48.060 But it doesn't look necessarily as good.

00:27:50.540 But I think ultimately, had I had somebody experienced

00:27:54.520 like with me, they would have advised and said,

00:27:57.040 you know, you don't need to spend that much there.

00:27:59.000 You don't need to spend this much here.

00:28:00.380 Like, you know, it's the first year.

00:28:01.380 We can rent that stuff.

00:28:01.880 Yeah.

00:28:02.380 And that would have been the difference between, you know,

00:28:04.320 profit and loss, right?

00:28:05.480 And we did actually make a loss, you know, in the first year.

00:28:09.020 Yeah.

00:28:09.560 Which, again, is pretty typical, but it's like, can you, yeah.

00:28:13.280 I mean, the events business is not known as like crazy profitable.

00:28:17.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:18.620 The thing is, to get it to the point where it can be,

00:28:22.340 you need to be at scale, right?

00:28:23.680 So you lose money year one.

00:28:25.440 There's already cash flow issues, and then you go at it again.

00:28:28.940 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:30.200 How are you funding it?

00:28:32.000 I was all self-funded for the first year.

00:28:34.580 Well, self-funded and obviously driven by revenue, right?

00:28:38.360 So ticket sales, sponsorship.

00:28:42.200 Obviously, I had an 11-year sales career,

00:28:44.480 so knew how to sell.

00:28:47.500 Although selling enterprise software platforms

00:28:50.260 and then selling sponsorship was actually a little bit

00:28:52.820 different, but still, we did fairly well.

00:28:56.380 I think the first year we had about like 25 partners.

00:28:59.200 That's a lot.

00:28:59.700 And we did, and it was like 100 grand.

00:29:02.060 Some people don't even know they should have sponsors.

00:29:03.760 Yeah.

00:29:04.600 They're like, I'll just sell tickets

00:29:05.820 and I'll make a bunch of money.

00:29:06.760 It's like, no you won't.

00:29:08.440 So we did, I think we did 25 partners.

00:29:11.980 And then we sold, out of the 700 attendees,

00:29:16.200 we sold about 500 tickets for the event.

00:29:18.440 So that went kind of pretty well.

00:29:21.100 Second year, then I took the partnerships from 25 to 55.

00:29:26.080 And then it was kind of at that point where I was like, well,

00:29:28.860 if I can do this in two days of the week when I'm not fully

00:29:33.520 on the sales, maybe this is the time

00:29:35.500 to hire in a full-time salesperson.

00:29:38.000 But back to your point in terms of how do you survive.

00:29:43.120 So we'd lost money on the event.

00:29:45.700 But then you kind of have like payment terms.

00:29:48.080 So I had paid for the majority of the events

00:29:52.880 throughout the year and before the conference.

00:29:55.700 Then there was some money kind of like owing after the conference.

00:29:59.200 I was like, OK, well, I owe this money.

00:30:03.300 We don't have this money.

00:30:06.060 It was a bit of a stressful discussion.

00:30:08.460 A bit of a stressful kind of moment in time.

00:30:11.560 But effectively, I didn't take any time off.

00:30:14.500 I did like $100,000 worth of renewals

00:30:17.360 within a couple of days with a lot of the happy partners,

00:30:21.360 which then got their cash in and then just

00:30:25.060 continue just selling, selling, selling, selling, selling.

00:30:26.980 Was there a pushback from early partners on first-year events?

00:30:30.500 Like, I'm assuming they've been burned.

00:30:33.160 Were they like?

00:30:33.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:34.200 So I mean, two examples.

00:30:36.880 One, where no pushback, and thank God, because again,

00:30:42.520 I think because of Sascribe, so the story like with Nick Franklin

00:30:48.160 from ChartMogul, I started Sascribe in February 2015.

00:30:53.240 I reached out to him in February 2015 for an interview,

00:30:56.660 like Q&A, just over email.

00:30:58.640 Initially, he pushed back on that, but then he did it,

00:31:01.400 because his business is a dashboard for SaaS companies.

00:31:05.360 And so we did an interview with him.

00:31:08.660 And then a few months later, he actually

00:31:10.760 then started doing some display ads on the Sascribe,

00:31:14.300 which our traffic was very focused, but it wasn't huge.

00:31:19.680 But actually, it did provide some ROI.

00:31:21.800 but we realized, you know, advertising wasn't the, the, the model. Um, and then I bumped into him

00:31:26.900 again in, well, he came to like the, the Berlin SAS meetup. And then I saw him at web summit.

00:31:32.560 I said, Nick, I'm going to do this conference. And he said, what if you do, I'll sponsor it.

00:31:36.820 And then I, a few weeks later, I was like, Nick, I've got the websites already. I've got the venue.

00:31:41.020 And he wrote the first check, right. For it to be our, our gold partner, you know, and this was

00:31:45.740 money upfront 12 months ahead of a conference for a first time event. Right. And somebody with no

00:31:51.680 experience and you know he's a vc backs and so he's taking a big risk here but so uh he said he

00:31:58.220 did it because he kind of you know he bought into into me he believed that i would do it right and

00:32:04.100 obviously that you know people like nick as well like a lot of people that you know um attended

00:32:08.980 sasdoc they wanted to see something like this succeed they needed it you know for the ecosystem

00:32:13.720 for their businesses so they you know they they've got to be involved if they want something like

00:32:19.100 that right um in in the ecosystem so nick was a like a early evangelist took a risk um and again

00:32:26.620 maybe because he was a a seed stage sas business it was easier for him to take that risk yeah but

00:32:33.020 then we had partners like salesforce wouldn't partner with us in the first year intercom

00:32:36.860 wouldn't partner you know with the first year which is fair yeah which is fair yeah it's

00:32:41.420 absolutely yeah it's like yeah you guys are smart yeah yeah um but but yeah so the uh they missed

00:32:48.300 out but you know the ones that they would have been cheaper yeah yeah exactly and and you know

00:32:52.860 nick has a great deal uh for life but uh but yeah like a lot of those partners that that did um you

00:32:59.020 you know partner with us in the first year and i say there was like 24 of them um you know loved it

00:33:04.220 and uh most of them are still with us you know today kind of you know so you know the chart mogul

00:33:09.500 have been with us for four years, ProfitWell been with us

00:33:11.960 for four years, ChargeB, Gainsight, et cetera.

00:33:15.320 They're all kind of renewing with us.

00:33:17.720 And then, obviously, now we're four years in.

00:33:22.040 We're seeing average revenue per partner

00:33:27.380 is increasing year over year, substantially.

00:33:32.320 We're having accounts that spent 10 grand with us,

00:33:35.180 now spent 50 grand with us, and this kind of growth.

00:33:38.740 Do you oversell sponsors?

00:33:40.740 Um, like when do you, would you like set a limit or do you just like, if you want to

00:33:45.500 give me money, we'll add your logo?

00:33:47.160 Like, is there?

00:33:48.160 Yeah, no, um, you, I mean, what they want is brand awareness and lead generation, right?

00:33:54.300 It's very kind of simple.

00:33:55.800 And, um, within that, you know, they, uh, they, they need a good audience.

00:34:00.860 Um, you know, so you have to deliver that, that audience.

00:34:03.820 Um, they don't really like, I think if you look at actually our partner deck, uh, sort

00:34:08.260 last year there's probably like way too many things in there which were like a lot of that

00:34:11.700 that they get yeah that is probably they don't even want right and we can probably strip a lot

00:34:16.220 of that out and simplify it um but yeah like i guess you know for each year you know the more

00:34:22.320 people that you can bring to them um the the happier they are right do they ever ask for

00:34:27.500 unique things that you're like i don't know if we do that yeah yeah yeah um yeah some people do

00:34:32.740 some people don't like patrick campbell will just come and do stuff and then apologize for it

00:34:36.020 afterwards yeah but again maybe it would be crazy if everybody did that but i quite like the fact

00:34:44.500 that you know he's got a plan and he you know he does stuff so yeah i mean for instance um i think

00:34:49.920 like i think he did it in the first year and he kind of continues to to do it like he just emailed

00:34:54.200 everybody you know that's at the at the conference says hey look i'm doing a you know a talk on

00:34:59.560 pricing at my booth sort of right now and then i see this you know big crowd around their booth

00:35:03.740 going, what's on?

00:35:04.680 And he's like, oh, and I see the email from him.

00:35:07.940 And then he's like, yeah, I meant to ask you,

00:35:10.200 but I'm just going to say sorry now or whatever.

00:35:12.440 But yeah, so yeah, that's pretty cool.

00:35:17.460 We always get like, we tailor stuff a little bit.

00:35:20.560 So we've got the off the shelf type offerings,

00:35:24.080 but everybody kind of wants something sort of unique.

00:35:25.940 So we've done like breakfasts and some special events

00:35:30.240 and stuff like that.

00:35:31.940 We've never had a car sponsor yet,

00:35:35.640 but we had a big German car manufacturer come to us

00:35:41.220 kind of this year and say, look, we're interested.

00:35:43.180 We want to get 300 CEOs in a room with a car. 0.69

00:35:47.820 Is the sensor kind of stage and how much would that cost?

00:35:51.480 And so we filled out all the details,

00:35:54.180 gave them a tailored proposal.

00:35:55.800 And would they car sponsor Uber and stuff for drivers

00:35:59.660 or just be like, let us pitch?

00:36:01.620 Yeah, no, I think they're just exposure for their brand.

00:36:04.040 Yeah, so they just want to get in front of, like, you know, CEOs and stuff.

00:36:07.640 And it's like, here's our car.

00:36:09.140 And it didn't go anywhere.

00:36:10.180 But car manufacturers do sponsor, you know, big tech events, right?

00:36:15.600 And we're kind of getting to that stage where, you know, we're getting to a kind of big-ish event.

00:36:21.240 You know, we've got a lot of C-level, you know, attendees there, right?

00:36:24.560 So they want to do that and get in front of them.

00:36:28.000 But mostly, we have SaaS companies that want to sell

00:36:30.780 to other SaaS companies that are our sponsors.

00:36:32.840 What are some weird moments from the events?

00:36:35.120 Like, has anybody ever done something super schemey?

00:36:37.600 You had to kick them out of the event?

00:36:40.300 People trying to sneak into the green room?

00:36:42.280 No, I don't know.

00:36:43.720 Do they?

00:36:45.140 I don't know.

00:36:45.640 There's some great muffins, dude.

00:36:47.140 The muffins from last year were so good.

00:36:48.880 Yeah, no, no.

00:36:49.500 I mean, probably.

00:36:51.120 I mean, I've snuck into a few green rooms in my time.

00:36:55.360 That's where the party's at.

00:36:56.560 Yeah.

00:36:57.760 But no, I mean, generally, I think everybody that comes to Sastoc

00:37:02.260 is pretty well-behaved, as far as I can see.

00:37:04.880 I mean, there are a lot of hangovers, right?

00:37:11.560 That's why it's called Sastoc.

00:37:12.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:37:13.760 So being in Ireland, being in Dublin,

00:37:17.940 I think it's such a magical city, right?

00:37:20.040 And because it's so much smaller, let's say,

00:37:23.180 London, you know, where I'm from and New York and San Francisco, um, you, you know, you bump into

00:37:28.800 people like in, in the morning when they're jogging in, in the park, obviously see everybody at the

00:37:32.980 conference. And then in the evening, you're bumping into them in the streets. And again, you know,

00:37:37.080 in the pubs and at dinner, and it's like at midnight, you know, you're coming out of restaurant

00:37:42.340 and there's, you know, David Darman and there's all these other people. Yeah. And, and, uh, and

00:37:47.300 it's great. Right. So it kind of feels like, yeah, everybody, everybody's here. Right. And,

00:37:50.900 And some of them speakers come and then they leave.

00:37:54.120 Yeah.

00:37:54.440 And that's not as fun.

00:37:55.600 Yeah.

00:37:55.800 I guess what I loved about Sassock is like people are there to be at the event, to experience

00:38:01.700 the city, to connect with people.

00:38:04.100 Yeah.

00:38:05.480 And that I think you've pulled off really well.

00:38:09.620 I just find like, you know, like, you know, what moments have happened that like you didn't

00:38:16.380 expect that you had to deal with?

00:38:17.840 I mean, obviously, you've got 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 people showing up.

00:38:22.860 Like, you're essentially responsible for these people.

00:38:25.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:26.620 Nothing.

00:38:27.940 I don't think anything too crazy.

00:38:30.320 I mean, I feel like I'm going to jinx them.

00:38:32.920 No, I did.

00:38:35.120 I mean, every year, I always say, you know, I'm going to behave, right?

00:38:41.040 And in terms of, you know, it's really exhausting doing a whole week of events.

00:38:46.840 I mean, because from Monday right to SAS Society,

00:38:50.740 which finishes on the Friday, right?

00:38:53.200 So obviously, not everybody is there for the full week.

00:38:55.080 But certainly, I am.

00:38:57.560 And therefore, it is a marathon.

00:39:00.880 But we have two speaker dinners on the Monday and Tuesday.

00:39:03.900 And as soon as you get into the speaker dinner.

00:39:06.100 That's true.

00:39:06.520 You run two separate.

00:39:07.840 Two speaker dinners.

00:39:08.680 There's too many speakers.

00:39:09.600 There's 150 speakers this year, so it's over two dinners.

00:39:14.920 And as soon as you go into the speaker's dinner,

00:39:16.460 You get in, and somebody hands you a glass of Prosecco.

00:39:18.980 I'm like, OK, it's been a long day.

00:39:20.740 I'll have one.

00:39:21.500 And then they're constantly filling it up.

00:39:23.360 And you're at a scene the next morning.

00:39:24.740 Well, yeah.

00:39:25.440 So this is it.

00:39:26.540 Last year, I took three speakers out until about 3 in the morning.

00:39:32.220 And one of them rocked up the next day.

00:39:35.180 I mean, I got on stage to do the second day opening remarks.

00:39:38.420 My mouth was pretty dry.

00:39:40.680 We had Yaakov from Leadfeeder.

00:39:43.300 I'm sure he doesn't mind me mentioning his name.

00:39:45.180 he was like just young big Finnish guy who was absolutely fine I was like my god how you how

00:39:50.140 are you you know fine um and then we we had Jack uh who um uh from uh from SIFT who was speaking

00:39:57.920 and he came in with like his uh sunglasses and it's like I feel absolutely terrible and he's

00:40:03.140 got to go on stage and he nearly puked on stage and so uh so we have had that so that's very

00:40:07.640 irresponsible of me to take speakers out and you know uh be entertainment until like you know

00:40:14.180 3 in the morning, but so I'll try and not do that, I think.

00:40:17.300 So it's more self-restraint than any of the attendees.

00:40:19.800 I think so, yeah.

00:40:20.800 Who have you wanted as speakers that

00:40:22.620 are still on your wish list?

00:40:24.620 One of the speakers, I mean, Mark Benioff

00:40:28.340 would always be great, right?

00:40:29.540 But I think he doesn't do a whole ton of third party events.

00:40:34.200 And he does Dreamforce.

00:40:38.040 What would you want him to talk about?

00:40:40.400 Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, right?

00:40:45.700 Obviously, you know, a lot of our attendees

00:40:48.740 are pretty early stage, right?

00:40:51.040 And so we don't like all the content at Sastoc

00:40:53.920 is very practical, actionable, it's super focused stuff.

00:40:59.000 So we probably have a bit of leeway

00:41:04.640 if we got somebody like Mark Benioff

00:41:06.060 to do something a bit more kind of like higher level,

00:41:08.760 a bit more inspirational type stuff, which we don't usually

00:41:13.980 take on board.

00:41:15.480 But I mean, for instance, he's not speaking this year,

00:41:18.860 but he's got a book out, actually, which launches

00:41:22.080 during SassDoc this year.

00:41:23.880 So it'll be great timing to kind of launch it.

00:41:26.220 Mark, you need to be there.

00:41:27.000 Yeah, Mark Roberge came on my podcast.

00:41:28.260 Yeah, come on. 0.77

00:41:29.100 Like, when it comes to the conference, exactly.

00:41:32.160 But yeah, people like Aaron Levy, he is the funniest dude.

00:41:35.940 Yeah, exactly.

00:41:36.780 He's great on social media.

00:41:38.400 probably great in person.

00:41:40.220 Apparently, he only comes to Europe in spring,

00:41:41.940 and the conference is in October, and I'm not moving it.

00:41:44.400 So that's a tough one.

00:41:47.900 I mean, they're out there a whole bunch that we do try.

00:41:51.160 And we've had some speakers where I've confirmed them,

00:41:55.460 and they've had to kind of pull out.

00:41:57.480 But twice they've done it or whatever.

00:42:01.240 But yeah, I've got a huge wish list of people

00:42:03.720 that we've never had.

00:42:05.940 Even like this year, actually.

00:42:07.320 Because I like the, OK, you've got the big names,

00:42:10.040 Mark Benioff, Aaron Levy.

00:42:11.940 But I'd like to get some of the unheralded names.

00:42:14.700 Yeah.

00:42:15.440 And also some of the known mainstream,

00:42:17.060 but what they've created is really special.

00:42:18.940 Yeah.

00:42:19.440 And maybe they're kind of like the next big thing.

00:42:21.700 So for instance, we tried with the founders of Notion.

00:42:28.800 And they're super focused right now.

00:42:32.280 And they're like, no distractions.

00:42:33.420 We're not going to come and speak at conferences.

00:42:35.800 And that's great, like Airtable, these sort of type of companies.

00:42:41.140 Yeah, I just migrated to Airtable.

00:42:42.400 It's pretty good.

00:42:42.940 Yeah, we've not done that yet.

00:42:44.700 I held off, man.

00:42:45.820 I fought it because I was like, I don't like tools just

00:42:48.280 for the sake of tools.

00:42:49.060 But it was compelling.

00:42:50.140 OK, yeah, we'll have to look into that.

00:42:52.600 But yeah, so these exciting products,

00:42:53.980 they're going to be the next unicorn.

00:42:55.560 So it's nice to actually get them in when they're just

00:42:57.640 that little step ahead of, like, there's a lot of buzz.

00:43:00.460 Yeah.

00:43:00.760 There's a lot of buzz around those type of things.

00:43:02.320 Yeah, the rising stars.

00:43:03.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:03.820 But again, even the rising stars, maybe because they're

00:43:06.020 rising stars, they're super busy.

00:43:07.320 And they're like, do we need to go?

00:43:10.480 We're heads down right now.

00:43:11.500 So I've reached out in the past and done events.

00:43:14.860 And when founders are like that, I'm like, come on, man.

00:43:17.380 Have a little bit of fun.

00:43:18.440 If you're going to say yes, this is the one to say yes to.

00:43:20.160 But they're like, no, heads down, focus.

00:43:21.920 Especially the YC founders.

00:43:23.140 I feel like YC is just like this militant,

00:43:25.640 like you should just be coding and growth

00:43:28.040 and don't talk to anybody.

00:43:29.360 You've got to have some time to step out

00:43:31.060 and see what the competition are doing.

00:43:32.940 Speak to your peers, learn, you know, it's good.

00:43:34.920 It's therapeutic.

00:43:36.020 It's like, you know, I mean, for the first two years, you

00:43:39.440 know, of running SassDoc, like, I didn't have a vacation.

00:43:42.940 You know, I was kind of heads down.

00:43:44.240 But through, it wasn't because we were the next sort of big

00:43:48.620 thing, but it was more out of, you know, survival, right?

00:43:51.080 And you've just got to keep the lights on and make it work.

00:43:55.480 And then after that, I felt like, well, you know,

00:43:58.080 I probably can have a holiday now.

00:43:59.560 But I was in bad shape in terms of, I was knackered.

00:44:05.140 I felt too guilty to go to the gym.

00:44:08.660 And I just had two young kids as well in the first two years.

00:44:11.780 True, eh?

00:44:12.280 They would have been right around that same time.

00:44:13.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:14.320 Because they're three and four?

00:44:15.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:44:16.400 So I had those.

00:44:17.380 And I put on a ton of weight.

00:44:19.080 Dude, what a time to start a company.

00:44:21.160 I know.

00:44:21.660 You have babies.

00:44:22.400 Exactly.

00:44:23.740 I mean, Gemma, my partner, when I said to her, look,

00:44:27.280 I'm going to quit my job.

00:44:28.900 And that was the only income that we had in the household at the time.

00:44:32.180 And I said, I'm going to go full-time on SAS doctors.

00:44:34.740 Can you wait?

00:44:35.900 Can you wait two years, she said.

00:44:39.120 I was like, well, if I'm going to wait two years, somebody else is going to do it.

00:44:42.260 And I'm not going to want to do it in two years' time, right?

00:44:44.160 Because I'll probably be thinking of something else.

00:44:46.680 So it had to be kind of now or never.

00:44:48.640 And thank God I did it.

00:44:51.200 So I guess maybe there is a good time.

00:44:54.180 And that was the best time, even though I had kids on the way.

00:44:57.080 A little painful.

00:44:57.880 A little painful.

00:44:58.480 But that gives you that focus, that drive.

00:45:00.940 Like, it doesn't work.

00:45:01.720 You've got to make it work.

00:45:02.560 It doesn't work.

00:45:03.060 We're on the streets.

00:45:04.540 That's motivation.

00:45:05.380 Yeah.

00:45:05.980 Alex, you've obviously started to build the team, 20 plus people.

00:45:09.880 As we wrap up, I love asking the question,

00:45:11.920 you know, founders of founders, who have you

00:45:13.780 had to become to lead this kind of company?

00:45:16.540 And just personally, what's been your journey?

00:45:19.180 What are some of the skills, mindsets?

00:45:20.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:21.580 Like, I mean, it's a big journey.

00:45:23.620 You know, like the first, you know,

00:45:26.080 I wouldn't necessarily say for like the first two years

00:45:29.060 I was like a leader, you know, I found it sort of like difficult.

00:45:32.880 I was really good at the sales thing.

00:45:35.140 So I would just kind of focus on the sales thing

00:45:38.040 and say, okay, well, you do, you know, you do the marketing

00:45:40.680 or you do this kind of thing, right?

00:45:42.080 And like when the team was three people, when it's seven people,

00:45:45.540 you don't necessarily, you don't have to do those weekly all hands

00:45:48.920 or, you know, the coaching and this sort of thing.

00:45:52.180 And that wasn't necessarily my arsenal like at the time.

00:45:56.080 And now very much more so, you know, I'm trying to be, you know, a mentor, a coach, you know, on a weekly basis doing, you know, one-to-ones and, you know, like performance reviews, this sort of thing and kind of trying to learn that still, you know, got, I think, you know, a long way to go, but getting much better at being, I think, you know, a boss and a leader of the company and again, the visionary right now, the position where you've, you know, you're the storyteller, right?

00:46:24.780 you've got to be that's got to be in your kit bag as well i think i've probably always had it you

00:46:30.140 know i've always had that um it's just becoming a bit more kind of refined right and so having that

00:46:36.220 kind of vision the clear vision and so everybody knows what the vision is and they work you know

00:46:40.780 towards that within the business so um so yeah i like much more um uh like this year the last sort

00:46:48.460 of two years been focused around being a better kind of leader being a better manager so you know

00:46:53.580 reading a whole ton of business books to try and understand

00:46:59.980 not only how to build a great company and a great team

00:47:03.720 and just how to be a better boss.

00:47:05.100 And I think one thing, actually, I still haven't done,

00:47:07.560 and I'm saying post-SASDOT 19, is

00:47:13.560 getting an executive coach and get a mentor.

00:47:16.440 Because still, four years down the line,

00:47:19.800 I'm trying to be a mentor and stuff to my team.

00:47:22.860 but I don't actually have one and I don't know, you know, who that, that person would be. That's

00:47:28.240 because again, I think it makes sense. Somebody that has done a conference business, somebody

00:47:32.340 that's been in events, right? Uh, a Joe Paluzzi type thing. If Joe, if you're listening, so, uh,

00:47:36.660 yeah. Um, but yeah, like having somebody kind of like that, there's been, that's been there,

00:47:42.180 done that would be, uh, would be, I think pretty, pretty helpful for me.

00:47:45.840 What would you expect from that person? Like, what would you, um, what do you expect you would

00:47:50.200 learn or kind of what areas would they challenge you

00:47:54.100 or bring clarity to?

00:47:56.140 Yeah, again, a good question.

00:47:59.080 So I mean, some of the things that I like to learn, again,

00:48:03.560 because we're, funnily enough, I get people who are just

00:48:07.360 starting out in the conference business that kind of reach out

00:48:09.640 to me and ask a lot of advice.

00:48:11.900 And I'm always kind of happy to give up my time

00:48:14.560 to the within reason and speak to them.

00:48:16.840 So again, somebody that has built, I think, an events

00:48:22.300 company that maybe like 50 to 100 sort of people,

00:48:25.680 that it's a global business.

00:48:26.780 I think some of the main challenges

00:48:29.440 are, as you're going global, the different markets

00:48:33.560 and understanding how to go to market

00:48:35.860 within those different regions.

00:48:37.880 So there are only a few really kind of big conferences

00:48:41.860 sort of out there that have either exited

00:48:46.420 or kind of still running, where actually they can give us

00:48:49.240 a lot of advice still, because again, a lot of learnings

00:48:52.160 this year going international.

00:48:55.300 But yeah, just again, if they also have that skill set,

00:48:58.280 it might be different coaches.

00:48:59.520 Somebody might be able to say, here's

00:49:01.420 how you build an international events business.

00:49:04.580 And then here's somebody who can say, well,

00:49:06.220 here's how you just be a better leader.

00:49:09.200 So it could be two different people, and therapists,

00:49:12.260 and whatnot, right?

00:49:13.660 Yeah, just somebody to listen to.

00:49:14.800 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:49:16.300 So all of that could probably be pretty beneficial.

00:49:19.480 That's cool, man.

00:49:20.260 I appreciate you saying that, obviously, self-serving.

00:49:22.720 But where do people find you online?

00:49:27.020 You can find me on Twitter.

00:49:29.540 I'm more probably active on LinkedIn, Alex Thiemer.

00:49:32.820 Sorry, LinkedIn has been slowly just taking more and more

00:49:35.500 of my time.

00:49:36.100 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:36.600 It's interesting.

00:49:37.400 Yeah, yeah, I think it's been pretty good for us.

00:49:39.880 And the Twitter account is growing,

00:49:43.540 Alex Thuma, a little bit, but I'm not the best on that.

00:49:47.040 People got to listen to the podcast.

00:49:47.960 The SaaS Revolution Show podcast has been going four years now.

00:49:51.980 We're going to do some new things, I think, on that in 2020,

00:49:55.200 but that's going great.

00:49:57.720 Yeah, and find us at sas.com.

00:50:00.760 So, yeah, come there, check it out,

00:50:03.120 and hopefully come to the Dublin one or next year in Latin America,

00:50:08.980 Asia, US, Australia.

00:50:11.520 Alex, I really appreciate you, man.

00:50:12.840 Thanks so much for everything.

00:50:13.960 Thank you.

00:50:14.520 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.

00:50:17.760 Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment with your biggest insight from our conversation.

00:50:23.240 Be sure to check out the next episode.

Dan Martell - October 22, 2020

Business Networking Success - Alex @ SaaStock - Escape Velocity Show #39

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