This year’s line-up for SaaStock is one of the most exciting we have had to date. Out of 100+ leading SaaS speakers, 55 will present keynote talks filled with lessons, tactics, frameworks and processes from their hustling and bustling in the tech world. But who are they, what will they share and why should you go see them?
It’s time to have a first, closer, glimpse at some of those speakers, get excited about their impressive careers and prepare a list of what you want to see. From successful entrepreneurs who have led their businesses to exits and acquisitions to the top investors in the field, Dublin will welcome the creme de la creme of the SaaS world between October 15th and 17th.
You can explore the full agenda and keep checking back with the blog as we release more info about other speakers, companies, VCs and more.
Come see them live in October to learn from them first-hand.
Morten Primdahl, Co-founder, Zendesk
Morten Primdahl has handled his career in the technology world, more than impressively. Initially he worked as a tech consultant, advising companies that varied from startups to online banking systems. Morten co-founded Zendesk in 2006, and has been on board ever since. He served as the company’s CTO for 11 years, handling all technical levels of Zendesk’s operation. Morten will share key lessons from building a server in a cupboard to reaching 110,000 customers and 2,000 employees, making Zendesk one of Europe’s most successful unicorns in the fireside chat with Christoph Janz, Managing Partner of Point9 Capital and the person who believed in Zendesk very early on.
Talk: Fireside Chat with Christoph Janz, Point9 Capital.
Corey Thomas, President & CEO, Rapid7
Early in his career, Corey Thomas had assumed that smart people building things would always win. Realising it does not work this way was a bit of a shock for him. As he moved into consulting, he needed to understand why that was. What makes winners and losers? He was a consultant at Deloitte then joined. In 2008, Corey started his journey Rapid7 and went through Sales, Marketing & Product, before being apponted President in 2011. Taking the company through a successful IPO during that period, Corey certainly has found at least some answer to the fundamental qustion about successful growth. He will sit for a chat with David Skok, to talk these and many other operational lessons he has picked up throughout his career.
Talk: Fireside Chat with David Skok
Brynne Kennedy, CEO and Founder, Topia
Brynne Kennedy is a power lady of many talents. A former professional gymnast, she made a career move to investment banking. After packing her life a number of times to move around the world, she identified a major mobility market need that wasn’t met: helping enterprise employees relocate. She decided to create a category out of that and in 2012, founded Topia. Creating the first end-to-end global mobility management (GMM) suite, Brynne has picked up over $100M in funding, and has on the way figured out how to execute complex sales cycles, run multiple offices, and combine a product and a service, all the while preserving company culture. Brynne will share effective strategies on how to leverage agile methodologies to create results-oriented teams and collaboration, across locations, at scale. She will also sit sit on the panel tackling successful expansion into the U.S.
Talk: The Future of Work & the Agile Organization;
Hopping the Pond: How European SaaS Companies Can Land and Expand in the U.S.
Dan Martell, CEO and Founder, SaaS Academy
Dan Martell is one of the most well-known names in the Canadian entrepreneurial landscape. He founded five companies, starting the first one when he was only 17. Three of them he led to acquisitions. Dan is an award-winning angel investor with a portfolio of more than 40 companies, including Udemy, Intercom, and Unbounce. He has a feel for the excellent opportunities. Currently he is busy coaching high-performing SaaS founders. His mission: to help SaaS businesses scale quickly, which he does by teaching them everything he has ever learned about entrepreneurship. As SaaStock18, he’ll give us a keynote about his top tips on rocking a product demo. Together with Michael Litt, CEO and Co-Founder of Vidyard, Dan will also run a growth workshop during the Startup Program Day on Monday, the 15th.
Talk: How to Rock a Content Demo;
Growth workshop
Heather Zynczak, CMO, Pluralsight
There’s a lot to learn about growth marketing from Heather Zynczak. With 20 years of experience in technology, she has learned the ins and outs of leading data-centric marketing for tech products. After working as a business consultant at Accenture, leading a couple of Silicon Valley startups, and a Global Vice President of Marketing role at Oracle, Heather joined some of the most exciting companies at the Silicon Slopes. First was Domo, where as CMO she achieved 100% year-on-year growth. Then in 2016, Heather joined Pluralsight, been the CMO of Pluralsight, where she achieved enough grow to aid the company go public. Heather mentors other businesswomen and also writes about her passion in publications like Fast Company, Forbes, and Fortune, Inc. At SaaStock she will reveal some of the secrets of a true growth marketer.
Eric Santos, CEO, Resultados Digitais
Eric Santos is a prominent name in the entrepreneurial world of Brazil. In 2010, he founded Resultados Digitais, which is a leader in the digital business space in Brazil. RD offers inbound marketing automation software to companies that want to ace their digital marketing efforts. When he started it, however, no one in Brazil understood marketing automation. His journey was more complicated by the fact he was growing a company outside the US taking a contrarian approach of expanding to other emerging markets first. Eric will share with us his experience of scaling a SaaS business past 15,000 customers and 700 employees in an emerging market.
Talk: Lessons from Creating a Movement and Scaling a Leading SaaS company in Emerging Markets
Megumi Ikeda, GM of Europe and MD, Hearst Digital Ventures
With degrees from Columbia University and London Business School, Megumi Ikeda boldly launched her career — first as a journalist and editor. In 2007, Megumi entered the investment world as a Partner at Peacock Equity Fund in London. She was an independent consultant for a couple of years before she joined Hearst Ventures Europe in 2014. Currently, she serves as GM for Europe and Managing Director. Megumi advises entrepreneurs, as well as digital media and entertainment companies.
Talk: The Evolution of SaaS Funding in Europe
Nathan Latka, CEO, TheTopInbox.com
Nathan Latka has been around the internet industry for a while — and his name is well-known to SaaS founders across the globe. In 2010, he founded Heyo, a company which helps businesses market on Facebook. It raised $2.5M Series A funding and was later acquired by Votigo in 2016. Nathan has been running his famous podcast The Top Entrepreneurs since 2016, with more than 4.5 million downloads to date. He is currently the CEO of SaaS Database GetLatka.com. Gathering an incredible amount of observations through all that experience, he is certainly one to talk about the State of SaaS. You can also see him do a live version of The Top with Adrien Menard, CEO of Botify.
Talk: The State of SaaS;
Live recording of The Top with Adrien Menard
Olivier Pomel, CEO, Datadog
Olivier Pomel’s career started as a software engineer at IBM and a couple of internet startups. In 2010, Olivier founded Datadog, a platform that offers next generation of tools for DevOps teams. It’s success has been anything but dizzying. Banking north of $100M in ARR, they have been doubling it every year so far. Part of their success has been seeing through a trend very early on and then developing it through immense grit. They had the right product at the right time and the circumstances to get close to their customers much more than usual. He will tell the ins and outs of that story across from Shardul Shah of Index Ventures.
Talk: Fireside Chat with Shardul Shah, Index Ventures
Michael Litt, CEO, Vidyard
Michael Litt graduated in Systems Design Engineering and started his professional path in product engineering and managing. Soon he felt his true passion was to create his own products, and he founded two businesses on his own. In 2011, Michael co-founded Vidyard, the leading platform for video marketing, becoming one of the people at the forefront of the online video innovations wave. He’s keen on exploring how video is changing the way people sell, engage, convert, and purchase. At SaaStock18, he’ll speak about the effect the demographic known as Generation Z will have on how business is done.
Talk: Gen Z and How it’s Impacting Business Today
Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing, Drift
Dave Gerhardt is one of the main people who pop to mind when you hear the words branding and marketing. He started out his career at Constant Contact, where he was a Product Marketing Manager. In 2015 he joined HubSpot where he produced, hosted, and marketed The Growth Show with HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe. He moved to Drift afterwards, quickly becoming Director of Marketing and then VP of Marketing. Dave is a Guest Lecturer at Harvard Business School. His keynote at SaaStock 2018 will focus on the importance of the brand.
Talk: Why Building a Brand Is the Single Best Investment You Can Make If You’re Serious About Growing Your Business This Year (And How to Do it Without Hiring a Six-Figure Agency or a Team of “Creatives”)
Bridget Harris, CEO, YouCanBook.me
Equipped with a MSc degree in Public Policy from UCL, Bridget Harris has held a number of advisory and political roles. She was a Special Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office. In 2012, she co-founded Youcanbook.me, the high-tech growth startup that develops a prominent online scheduling tool. Bridget is an advocate for new political leadership, women in politics in UK and Africa, and technology that is driving change. With her rich and diverse background, she’ll speak about the smart ways to master customer relationships.
Talk: The Evolution of Our Customer Relationships — How We Acquired, Nurtured and Grew Our Customer Base to 15,000 with No Marketing, Sales or Funding
Eric Siu, CEO, Single Grain
Everything digital is close to heart for Eric Siu. After holding numerous positions as a digital marketing manager, he joined Single Grain in 2013, and has been its CEO ever since. The company offers customized digital marketing strategies to businesses of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Eric is also the host of two podcast series, Growth Everywhere and Marketing School. In his keynote at SaaStock18, he will give insights on customer acquisition strategies and tactics, tried and tested extensively on SaaS clients, with remarkable results. Or with other words, a simple way to increase dwell-time on your site by 20% to boost your SEO.
Talk: How to Generate Customers on Autopilot for 2018 & Beyond
Alexis Prenn, Co-founder, Receipt Bank
Alexis Prenn’s first professional steps were at the LSE conglomerate Magellan. Since then he has created businesses in areas like IT training, event management software and security equipment. Later on, he became one of the founding partner at Triple Point Investment Management. In 2010, Alexis co-founded Receipt Bank — a fast growth fintech SaaS business. At SaaStock in Dublin, he will share his first-hand insights into SaaS metrics from his experience at Receipt Bank in conversation with Alex Kayyal of Salesforce Ventures.
Talk: Receipt Bank — Seven years of Trying and Failing with SaaS Metrics — on the Road to 2,964% Growth
April Dunford, Founder, Rocket Launch Marketing
April Dunford is one of those startup executives that simply know how to get marketing positioning right. She has held various senior positions such as VP, COO, and CEO in a number of tech companies, among which Huawei, where she was the VP of Marketing. In 2009, April founded Rocket Launch Marketing, where she counsels early stage startups on their go-to-market strategies, combining that with advice on marketing, product, sales, and customer success. She also advises bigger companies on new product introduction and market positioning. Bringing her rich experience to the table, April will give a keynote on using context to get noticed in an overcrowded space.
Talk: How to Use Context to Unlock Growth in Noisy Markets
Carrie Osman, Founder and CEO, Cruxy & Company
Carrie Osman grew quickly in her career, which started out at the well-known sweets company Mars. She began as an intern and within 7 years, she was reporting directly to the UK CEO. In 2013, she founded Cruxy & Company, a tech strategy company based in London. It provides ‘provocative strategy consultancy’ for those businesses that dare. The areas where Cruxy & Company specializes include pricing strategy, sales transformation, commercial repositioning, product market fit, and more. She will enlighten the crowd at SaaStock18 on the best ways to come up with a working SaaS pricing strategy.
Talk: Interrogating the Good & Bad When It Comes to SaaS Pricing Strategy
Adam Marcus, Managing Partner, OpenView Venture Partners
Adam Marcus knows a thing or two about the investment world. After taking leading positions such as Managing Director of Boston Celtics, he became an Associate at Battery Ventures in 2005. Since 2009, he has been a Managing Partner at OpenView Venture Partners. Adam is also serving on the boards of a number of portfolio companies. Some of his investments at OpenView include Instructure, UnboundID, and Instantly. He defines his passion clearly — application software with a specific focus on vertical SaaS.
Talk: The Future of SaaS is Product-Led, Are You Ready?
Norman Happ, SVP Sales, Partnerships & Customer Success, Evernote
Norman Happ has walked the long way from software engineer to SVP of Evernote — and he knows everything in-between. He also co-founded Anachron, Europe’s first Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment company. Norman has had a number of high-profile positions such as VP of Sales and Marketing and Chief Revenue Officer at various tech companies. He’s been at Evernote since 2016 where he’s in charge of worldwide customer acquisition, install-base retention and growth, and overall customer experience. Equipped with eventful years of experience at various companies, he’ll share with us his views on getting to a product that customers actually like.
Talk: The Critical Art of a Customer-Backed Product
Excited to hear from and meet these SaaS legends? Grab a ticket and join us in Dublin in October 15th to the 17th.
