Startups’ Ultimate Guide to re:Invent 2020
A free, 3-week virtual conference running Nov. 30 — Dec. 18
re:Invent 2020 is poised to offer three weeks of cutting-edge content, coveted by developers, builders, and the generally cloud-obsessed. And while we won’t be physically together this year to bustle between busy meeting rooms, Keynote stages, and the expo halls, 2020’s digital experience is shaping up to serve you all of the energy, intrigue, and latest releases that you’d expect from re:Invent.
All of this content will be available for you to take in from the comfort of your home office — and possibly your pajamas. If you haven’t had a chance to attend re:Invent before, this is your opportunity to get the full scoop with “Ask Me Anything” sessions featuring startup leaders and AWS technical experts, Keynote product launches revealing all that is coming from AWS, and over 500 content track sessions where you can deep dive on specific categories that are of most interest to you.
If you have attended re:Invent in years past, rest assured, we’ve lined up an incredible experience featuring fan favorites such as Jams, Game Days, and of course, DeepRacer — as well as a plethora of additional content you will not want to miss!
So, what is re:Invent?
re:Invent is the world’s premier cloud learning event, hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the global cloud computing community. Traditionally an in-person conference taking place in Las Vegas, this year’s re:Invent is entirely virtual, and free of charge to attend. It’s a technical conference with mostly technical sessions that describe how some of the smartest startups, SMBs, and enterprises in the world are building what they build best. They’ll dive deep into what works and where they went wrong. Do you have to be a startup jockey to get something out of these sessions? No. You just need the drive to operate at the speed and scale that the fastest growing companies do. And who doesn’t want that?
Now, let’s be honest, between executive Keynotes, leadership sessions, and over 500 track sessions, it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start and where to focus your attention, even while navigating virtually. With that in mind, we’ve broken down the must-see sessions and events into this handy guide. Final assembly of your re:Invent experience is up to you, but this guide should help get you started.
First, register here and start building your schedule. The re:Invent session catalog is now live!
Next, pick the sessions and events that are of most interest to you. Events have been linked below for you to register to attend. All sessions have been tagged with their session ID numbers, so you can easily search and add them to your schedule.
Hear from the Biggest Thought Leaders in Cloud Technology
Re:Invent Keynotes — The heavy hitters of re:Invent
Join executive Keynote sessions to be the first to hear the latest from AWS. We’re kicking off with Andy Jassy’s Keynote live from Seattle, sharing the latest news about AWS customers, products, and services. We’ll also feature an AWS Partner Keynote, where you’ll learn how AWS is helping partners modernize their businesses to help customers transform, along with our first-ever Machine Learning Keynote with Swami Sivasubramanian, VP Amazon AI. The Keynote features will wrap up with Peter DeSantis, SVP of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, where he’ll review how AWS has optimized its cloud infrastructure to run some of the world’s most demanding workloads, and how you can leverage this optimization to give your business a competitive edge.
Leadership Sessions — Learn, Foster, Grow
You’ll hear directly from AWS leaders as they share the latest in AWS technologies, set the future of product direction, and dive into compelling customer success stories. From Analytics to Training and Certification, you’ll learn what’s next on the horizon from AWS and how it can help your business.
Interactive Sessions
Need answers to some burning questions, or want to learn from other innovative, cutting-edge startup founders? Try these interactive sessions.
Startup Central Community Lounge — Join us in a centralized virtual hub where you can learn from some of the world’s fastest-growing startups and consult with AWS startup experts one-on-one to get your questions answered.
Ask the Startup Expert — The Ask the Startup Expert event series allows startups to get their burning questions answered live by AWS experts and speakers from fast-growing startups. Each session will provide opportunities to dive deep on topics including: Accelerating with AI/ML, Getting Started with AWS, Go-to-Market Strategies for Startups.
Sessions and Events for Startups: Start on the Right Track
Links to registration pages for startup events have been provided below, and Session ID numbers have been provided next to each re:Invent session so you can easily find, and add these sessions to your schedule.
Early-Stage: Just getting your startup off the ground? These events will provide the most important info you need.
StartOut Demo Day — Demo Day is an opportunity for the most innovative LGBTQ startups from the StartOut community to demonstrate their product, discuss their go-to-market strategy, and pitch for future fundraising rounds in front of a panel of angel investors, venture capitalists, and brands.
Mentorship — Are you an early-stage startup? We’ve got Amazon experts to answer your questions on topics ranging from building your first sales team to perfecting your pitch deck, building your MVP, and fundraising best practices. Apply for a mentor session to get your burning questions answered.
Female Founders Event and Pitch Competition — This two-day event kicks off with a fundraising and go-to-market focus, featuring sessions about knowing your worth, conquering bias, and overcoming common challenges. We’ll conclude with a live pitch competition with Women 2.0. Inspiring female founders, who will pitch their ideas and receive live feedback from VCs for a chance to win a cash prize.
How OpenSesame accelerated time to market on AWS — Join us for a virtual event with OpenSesame Media, Inc. as we explore the advantages of AWS serverless technology to create the quickest path to production while utilizing event-driven processes to keep costs to an absolute minimum.
Everything FinTech Startups Need to Know about Driving CX Success — Whether you are a founder, developer, product manager, UI/UX manager, or are simply curious about how to convert customer data into meaningful actions in the Financial Services Industry, this event can help enhance your CX strategy by debunking the most common industry use cases for you.
Startup CFO Panel: Managing Recovery and Getting to Growth — This unique CFO panel from early-, growth-, and late-stage companies will discuss financial reporting and analytics in times of uncertainty, optimization strategies, insights on fundraising, and finance technology investments that deliver an ROI.
APN Global Startup Success Panel — Hear from leading AWS Startup partners who are leveraging the APN Global Startup Program to power their growth and bring their innovative solutions to enterprise customers. Founders and CXOs from top startups will be discussing what it takes to be a mid-to-late-stage startup, what keeps them up at night, what has worked for them individually and at scale, and how to most effectively engage with the APN and its many benefits.
The Full Machine Learning re:Invent Release Guide for Startups — If you’re an ML startup, this talk is for you. Join us for a comprehensive overview of the most powerful machine learning product releases you’ll see at re:Invent — tailored to startups. From data to deployment, learn about new features that will make your ML team more productive, more efficient, and more effective.
Growth-Stage: You’ve gotten through some of the major hurdles in getting your business off the ground — now what? These sessions are focused on establishing an infrastructure that promotes scalability and long-term growth. Search using keywords from the title to locate these sessions in the platform, and add them to your schedule.
• A bigger plate: Swiggy’s growth on AWS
• On the money: How Paystack champions African businesses
• How SkyAlert prepares for disaster prevention using AWS
• Make the Leap! How wefox switched over to AWS
• How Dream11 created India’s biggest fantasy sports platform with AWS
• On-demand testing environments that engineers will love
• How cloud robotics can protect employees and customers
• How Airtable safely runs custom user scripts
• Skydio: Scaling autonomous flight for enterprise with AWS
• How CATCH FASHION built a serverless ML inference service with AWS Lambda
• The journey of an AWS CloudFormation template to AWS CDK
• No more idling: Creating parallel builds using serverless CI
• Understanding multi-account management
• Amazon API Gateway HTTP APIs: Beyond the proxy
• CI/CD for serverless applications
• Ten easy and effective ways to secure your AWS environment
• SaaS boost: Using open source to accelerate SaaS adoption
• Embed analytics in your applications with Amazon QuickSight
• Lessons learned from COVID-19 cost optimization efforts
• Building event-driven applications with Amazon EventBridge
• Application integration patterns for microservices
• Choose the right machine learning algorithm in Amazon SageMaker
• Get started with Amazon SageMaker in minutes
Late-Stage: You’ve secured funding, achieved scalability, and are ready to take your startup to the next level. These sessions are just what you need.
• Elevating customer experience with Decibel
• The business case for serverless with Stedi
• Kurly transforms with AWS to adapt and grow
• Operational BI: Executing ML models at speed and scale
• How Just Eat Takeaway is building resilience for the long run
• Analyzing data at any scale with AWS Lambda
• Two-pizza teams: Organizing for innovation
• Amazon.com’s use of AI/ML to enhance the customer experience
• Optimize costs and manage spend for containerized applications
• Adrian Cockcroft’s architecture trends and topics for 2021
• The right tool for the job: Enabling analytics at scale at Intuit
• Implement MLOps best practices with Amazon SageMaker
• Train and tune ML models to the highest accuracy using Amazon SageMaker
• Detect machine learning (ML) model drift in production
Non-Tech Sessions: Need a break from the technical sessions? Check out these talks.
• Empowering Entrepreneurs through Eco-initiatives
• Leveraging technology to scale sustainable community development
• Making Tech Inclusive and Accessible through AI
• Gamification for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity
• Girl Geek Academy Is Gearing up the Next Gen of Gals in STEM
• Emotional Resilience: How to Thrive in Stressful Times
• Two-Pizza Teams: Building innovative teams that scale
• Working Backwards: Amazon’s approach to innovation
• Amazon’s Culture of Innovation
