ICYMI: Value-Packed Takeaways from SaaStr 2018
Born in 2012, SaaStr had humble beginnings as a blog and a few answers on Quora aimed to help share Jason M. Lemkin’s secrets to success with the next generation of great SaaS and B2B entrepreneurs.
It quickly grew to become the largest community of SaaS founders and entrepreneurs, hosting events throughout the year — the highlight of which is SaaStr annual, the largest conference for cloud-based tech companies.
SaaStr is all about community — bringing together the leaders of cloud technology to learn, inspire and problem solve together.
If you couldn’t make it to the festivities this year, here is what you missed:
We Made Some Friends
The cherry on top of an awesome conference was when one of our customers stopped by our booth to give us some love.
Alaya is a cloud-based software that offers end-to-end solutions for home health care agencies. With a sophisticated solution being used remotely by their customers, training and onboarding was a primary pain point. Here is what they said about us:
“WalkMe allows us to be sitting next to them and whispering best practices and advice in their ears is next level customer experience.” Watch the full video below!
There Were Some Top-Notch Speakers
1. Sales Hack: Believe in Your Product
Alvina Antar, CIO at Zuora spoke about believing in what you are selling. B2B SaaS companies should be prepared to answer the question, “How do you use your product internally?” Beyond just POC, seeing how the product is used in real-time has benefits for the entire company.
Key takeaway: Prioritize building technical, functional expertise in your own products and it will have a profound impact on your business transformation.
2. How To Make an $850M Exit
Making a dramatic and lucrative investment is the dream of any entrepreneur. We summarized SVP Sales & Customer Engagement Kathy Lord’s pointers to bring you actionable gold nuggets:
- Invest in leadership and talent to drive revenue.
- Differentiate your product to increase profitability and EBITDA.
- Be disciplined with execution to see your capital grow.
A great SaaS product deserves great user experience. Learn more here.
3. Bust these Myths About Startup Success
Therese Tucker CEO of Blackline dropped some truth bombs, these were our favorites:
- Being founder doesn’t make you a rockstar — focus on being humble. You don’t need to raise funding to be successful.
- Bootstrapping is a real strategy and it teaches a lot of discipline which is beneficial for long-term viability.
- When hiring talent, invest in the best. Good, cheap or not crazy: Pick two! Tucker is a fan of crazy.
- Women are an undervalued asset in the market. Women in tech should leverage this opportunity!
Put SaaStr on Your Roster for Next Year!
Still wondering what SaaStr is all about? Check out this video from Mindshare, featuring our very own Dan Adika, and our customer, Zuora.
If you are a SaaS company, SaaStr is the place to be! See you next year.
Originally published at blog.walkme.com on February 14, 2018.
