SaaStock West Coast is the region’s most actionable conference for growth stage B2B SaaS teams – and we are excited to announce that the agenda is now live.

Following our extensive research, identifying the core challenges of SaaS founders, executives and investors, we’ve organized an event to address the most common pain-points and tailored the content to ensure our delegates capitalize on the market opportunities across the West Coast. Growing and scaling their SaaS companies from the ‘home of SaaS’ to the four corners of the globe, we are helping them not only take their revenue from $10K – 10M, but supercharge their business with the tactics and strategies they’ll need to thrive in a rapidly-growing industry.

Challenges

The top themes that came up this year naturally fell under people, business and product:

1) People – Nailing Hiring & Culture as you grow

2) Business – Tackling the struggles of scaling up

3) Product – Getting the product right for long-term customer success

To address these challenges we have taken the time to put together the best possible mix of content over the two days of the conference. On the first day, September 10th, we step away from the more traditional conference format and run three independent workshops that offer experiential learning on Marketing, Sales and the art of leading a company. Each is limited in capacity (30 to 40 people) so attendees can make the most of the deep-dive, interactive format.

Speakers

On the second day, September 11th, we have recruited over 20 of the industry’s brightest experts that will bring cutting-edge content organized in a dozen sessions. Some of them include:

  • Tomasz Tungusz, Partner, Redpoint Ventures – The industry’s must-read blogger and investor at Redpoint Ventures with exits including Looker, who just announced an acquisition by Google
  • Dan Martell, Chief Instigator, SaaS Academy – In the past year, Dan has partnered with and helped over 65 founders to raise capital, scale or exit their SaaS businesses
  • Leela Srinivasan, CMO, SurveyMonkey – Leela joined Survey Monkey a little over a year ago, and has been successfully balancing brand awareness and perception, with educating the market about Survey Monkey’s enterprise capabilities and demonstrating traction with crucial customers.
  • Tae Hea Nahm, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Storm Ventures – Co-authored a book with industry veteran, Bob Tinker, which succinctly breaks down the steps to building an enterprise startup using real-world case studies
  • Sophia Eng, VP Marketing at Trade The Fifth, and Founder of Women In Growth – Founder of Women in Growth and former growth marketer at Workday, Autodesk and InVision, Sophia is passionate about taking active steps to drive true diversity and inclusion

We work hard with each speaker to make sure that sessions offer much needed real straight talk on the struggles of growing a SaaS company day in and day out. The speakers are taking the stage to help you on the difficult growth stages of a SaaS company.


PEOPLE – Nailing Hiring & Culture As You Grow

The most common challenge that came out from our research were issues around hiring and culture. The companies we spoke to had already dealt with the issues of finding product-market fit and looked at how to optimize the cost of hiring and build a culture and mission that retained the best employees.

Top 5 challenges include;

  • Driving an engaging employee experience that gets people in the door and keeps them
  • Reducing churn whilst scaling and hiring top talent as you grow, particularly in light of the competitive packages offered by tech giants
  • The never-ending balancing act of understaffing and over hiring in the growth stages
  • Defining the point at which you build a remote team – particularly for BD and customer success teams
  • Establishing and maintaining a good company culture as you double and triple in headcount

Our agenda tackles the above challenges, through both a thought-leadership and practical, step-by-step type session coming from Zendesk, Looker and other successful SaaS companies:

  1. Mindset Shift – Igniting Inclusion & Diversity to Build Long-Term Value (read more)
  2. 7 Steps to Hire Your First SaaS Sales Team and Build this as You Grow (read more)

 

BUSINESS – Tackling the Struggles of Scaling-Up

However, establishing your product in the B2B market is not enough to step on the pedal to truly accelerate and grow, whether this involves building sustainable traction on a local or international scale. We delve into the struggles of scaling up as a Founder, VP or Executive and tackle the following challenges you found most difficult…

Top 5 challenges include;

  • Scaling the core business through a top down or bottom up approach
  • Dealing with the struggles of leading at the helm as the Founder/CEO
  • Raising early-stage funding – what are the options, what do investors look for & what about bootstrapping?
  • Scaling in Europe vs. North America vs. APAC – how do you prioritize your market in terms of resources and where do you want to go to invest a physical presence, define headcount, and product adaptations?
  • Streamlining operations costs through remote offices, and exploring metropolitan areas outside of the bay area

We’ll be tackling the above challenges head-on through the following sessions:

  1. Top 5 Mistakes Made in Going from $1M – $10M ARR (read more)
  2. The SaaS Founders’ Playbook for Going from Startup to Scaleup (read more)
  3. Survival to Thrival – The No-Nonsense Guide to Growing an Enterprise Startup (read more)
  4. Experts Under Fire – Tips, Tricks & Trends for Scaling a Valley-Based SaaS (read more)


PRODUCT – Getting the Product Right  

Scaling your product – whether in the traction, growth or scale stages, will never get old or easy. One obvious place to start with is improving the customer on-boarding experience. Deciding on when to say yes or no to new features is another, along with identifying the pricing and packaging for different market offerings. We’ve identified the key issues that you face on a day-to-day basis.

Top 5 challenges include;

  • Accessing the right data and architecture to ensure your product is well protected, customer-centric, and scalable
  • Using feedback in your commercial, marketing and product functions to drive growth
  • Moving your product upstream
  • Unlocking additional growth through sharp positioning to tackle stickiness in the funnel, reducing CAC and increasing LTV
  • Defining your next step of growth for your freemium model if you’ve built a lot of traction already

To address the above, we’ll be bringing leading experts in the space in the following sessions:

  1. Strategies to Build a Compelling Customer-Centred Product (read more)
  2. Building out the Right Data & Architecture to Grow Your SaaS Startup (read more)
  3. Scaling Sales – Process & Pricing Strategies to Move Upmarket (read more)
  4. Driving Disruptive Growth in the Feedback Economy (read more)
  5. Building Better Recurring Revenue Models for Traction & Growth (read more)

If you have experience with any of these challenging topics and have solved them, we would love to have you on the SaaStock West Coast stage. Apply to speak and join our first-class speaker roster.

Ready to grow your SaaS? Join 400+ SaaS Founders, Execs & Investors at SaaStock West Coast in San Francisco (September 10-11). Save $200 when you book your place with the early bird discount.