00:09:33.500I wasn't naive enough to think that having never run a SaaS
00:09:37.380business, and I'm not a VC either, I'm not in the trenches.
00:09:40.900So 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.
00:09:50.800So I got some experts in with a steering committee, a couple of, you know, a couple of VCs, a couple of operators as well.
00:09:59.040And then they would look at the agenda that I was putting together and give advice.
00:10:29.120So I'd do a sprint in January and by February I'd have like 30 speakers confirmed
00:10:32.760and, you know, maybe put like 20 up there and then add a few in kind of afterwards.
00:10:36.900uh but then yeah i just found like the then we would have the maybe may was the kind of point
00:10:42.460where we wanted to do the first draft of the agenda and you know put that kind of live and
00:10:46.480show you uh people you know what's happening because people like seeing who's speaking but
00:10:50.860they also want to know a lot of people like you know what are they what are they going to learn
00:10:54.280about right what are the particular specific topics that um and i was just becoming a bottleneck in
00:10:59.760that i was like i've got so much to do um i wouldn't give it as much time as it deserves
00:11:05.760And 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.
00:11:14.540And that's when I got introduced to Emma, Emma Pierce.
00:22:37.060And 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.
00:22:46.800And 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.
00:23:02.320So 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?
00:23:09.400We 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.
00:23:20.560So 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.
00:23:34.160And, yeah, we probably did a couple of meetups after the first SaaS stock.
00:23:39.220But then we just focused on on the main conference.
00:23:41.560But actually, you know, the important thing is that you should continue, I think, to do the community building and the grassroots stuff.
00:24:06.280And we're like, we probably should have, right?
00:24:09.580And so now, anyway, with Sasslot Local,
00:24:12.680we have the, I think, the ability to do this at scale.
00:24:16.580We'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.
00:24:29.440And I think we've got about 20 at the moment.
00:24:31.900We had like 10 happening this month alone in Helsinki, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, you know, so it's really great to see.
00:24:43.260And again, it's showing that there is such this hunger and demand
00:24:46.140and getting about like close to 100 people per event.
00:26:39.140Yeah, just like probably didn't have to spend as much on the staging as I did.
00:26:44.100I would think I like the, you know, I have a lot of respect for the partners that we work with.
00:26:49.620But, 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.
00:45:42.080And like when the team was three people, when it's seven people,
00:45:45.540you don't necessarily, you don't have to do those weekly all hands
00:45:48.920or, you know, the coaching and this sort of thing.
00:45:52.180And that wasn't necessarily my arsenal like at the time.
00:45:56.080And 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?
00:46:24.780you've got to be that's got to be in your kit bag as well i think i've probably always had it you
00:46:30.140know i've always had that um it's just becoming a bit more kind of refined right and so having that
00:46:36.220kind of vision the clear vision and so everybody knows what the vision is and they work you know
00:46:40.780towards that within the business so um so yeah i like much more um uh like this year the last sort
00:46:48.460of two years been focused around being a better kind of leader being a better manager so you know
00:46:53.580reading a whole ton of business books to try and understand
00:46:59.980not only how to build a great company and a great team