Traction Conference Vancouver 2016 Recap

Words can’t begin to describe how extraordinary last week was. Between the 6 events that we’ve organized, 700 attendees showed up. We also had 36 world class speakers taking the stage, 16 of whom were women. The conference was supported by 13 gold sponsors, 3 silver sponsors, 6 seed sponsors, 5 media sponsors, and 56 community partners. The team behind Traction is small- there are only 6 of us, but we had the incredible support of 42 volunteers throughout the 2-day conference.

This comment from one of our sponsors sums it all up the best.

“Traction Conf felt like being at a fabulous wedding with strangers.”

And he’s right. We came as strangers, but we left the conference as friends. There were many connections made, memories shared and moments lived.

Here’s the recap

Driving monetization and retention was the key focus of Traction Conf this year, held from June 22nd to 24th in Vancouver.

Attendees were witness to an incredible amount of expertise delivered on growth, sales, marketing, analytics and revenue optimization from over 30 C-suite and growth leaders from companies such as Y-Combinator, Box, Domo, MongoDB, Greylock Partners, Atlassian, Intercom, Hotwire, Zillow, Foursquare, AppDirect, SendGrid, HubSpot, Expensify, Thumbtack and many more, with almost 50% of the lineup being women leaders in tech.

“So many amazing women investors, speakers & delegates here at Traction Conference. The Traction Conf team gets an A+ in diversity!” — Danielle Smith, Community Engagement Lead at Ryerson DMZ.

Traction Conf, which was presented by Launch Academy, Boast Capital & Victory Square, drew 700 attendees across 4 events. The expanded format included Workshops along with two smaller invite by nomination events, the CEO Summit and Founder Escape, in addition to the main conference on June 23rd.

“I’m impressed once again”, said Boris Wertz, one of the top tech investors in North-America, CEO and founder of Version One Ventures and board partner at Andreessen and Horowitz. “The talent you’re bringing up to Vancouver for this conference is just amazing. It feels like the only time of the year that I don’t have to travel to them, but they are coming to me.”

The conference kicked off with deeper dive workshops on product, sales and analytics on Wednesday afternoon at The Vancouver Playhouse. This was followed by the opening reception where attendees had the opportunity to network with each other and the speakers at the picturesque Classical Chinese Garden.

The bulk of the speakers took the stage on Thursday at the Sheraton Wall Centre, in a flow of back-to-back fireside chats, panels, and solo presentations filled with actionable, stimulating, and relatable accounts, insights, and guiding philosophies that were motivation rocket fuel for the ambitious entrepreneur.

“Traction is THE conference to supercharge your business by learning from thought-leaders of the fastest growing companies in the world!” — Daniel Saks, Co-founder and Co-CEO of AppDirect.

Here are some of our favourite takeaways:

• Patrick Campbell, CEO at Price Intelligently, stated that improving retention and monetization will have 2–4X the impact of focusing on acquisition. By focusing on these growth levers, companies can capture more revenue and reduce the risk of high churn when they optimize for growth.
• Mark Roberge, Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot surprised the audience that coachabiliy scored the highest in their sales hiring formula and then followed by curiosity, intelligence, work ethic and prior success. This sales hiring formula has helped Hubspot generate $181.9 million in revenue in 2015, which was up 57% than in 2014.
• Heather Zynczak, Chief Marketing Officer at Domo, urges the room of marketers and executives to live by ROI. She said 82% of marketers are held accountable for ROI on marketing spend but only 33% have access to marketing contribution to revenue.
• Sarah Tavel, Partner at Greylock Ventures, advised entrepreneurs to create accruing benefits as a user engages, and mounting losses if the user leaves the product. Accruing benefits refer using the data that you collected from your users to improve their experience. Mounting losses refer to creating user dependency for your product so when they leave your product, they would have much to lose.
• Des Traynor, Co-founder at Intercom, discussed the importance of onboarding and argued that onboarding should change every time your product changes. Signing up for your app is the one thing every user is guaranteed to do so entrepreneurs should be relentlessly obsessed with onboarding their users. First impressions matter!
• Lauren Vaccarello, VP Marketing at Box, delivered 5 retargeting strategies to drive conversions and adoption. She gave actionable advice on integrating marketing automation softwares, facebook ads, and retargeting softwares so you will have more opportunities to convert the 98% visitors who didn’t convert the first time.

If you are interested in learning more, please click here to access all of our speakers’ slides.

Lastly, huge shout out to all of our sponsors, speakers, partners and volunteers who made Traction Conf a meaningful and memorable experience!

Here are some of our favourite tweets: