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SaaStr Annual 2019, the world’s biggest gathering of software experts and SaaS industry leaders will take place February 5-7 in San Francisco, CA. The largest conference of B2B software companies, SaaStr draws high-level sponsorship from tech giants like Slack, HubSpot, Google Cloud, and Zoom, and attracts more than 12,000 attendees. Pre-registration for all presentations is required, and with more than 300 talks to choose from, it’s important to have a game plan. Here’s a list of sessions that finance-minded professionals won’t want to miss:
Tuesday, February 5
Presentation: Opening Remarks + The Things Nobody Tells You About an $8B Acquisition
Time: 11:30 AM-12:20 PM
Speakers: Jason Lemkin, Founder, SaaStr | Ryan Smith, CEO, Qualtrics
Founded in 2002, Qualtrics is an experience management software aimed at optimizing an organization’s “vital signs” by tracking and measuring customers, employees, and relationships. The Qualtrics brain trust has publicly claimed that experience management is currently a $44B market worldwide, citing the individual components that make up the real-time customer interaction-analysis solutions. Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith will share his thoughts on Qualtrics’ growth and development from bootstrap startup to billion-dollar organization. Listen to him describe the company’s maturation, including the November 2018 acquisition by multinational software giant SAP. The acquisition was an $8B in all-cash deal, making it the second largest SAP acquisition to-date.
Presentation: Q&A with Keith Rabois, Investment Partner at Khosla Ventures
Time: 1:45 PM-2:30 PM
Speaker: Keith Rabois, Investment Partner, Khosla Ventures
Veteran investor Keith Rabois will offer his unique perspective as a leading member in the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. Both an entrepreneur and investor, he has held executive roles at LinkedIn and PayPal, and has led several growth projects with a variety of software companies such as Stripe and Thoughtspot, all the while managing his own technology-focused real estate start-up, OpenDoor. Check out his thoughts on building exceptional organizations.
Presentation: How to Design a Sales Comp Plan to get you to $100M with Work-Bench, Movable Ink, MongoDB, and Concert Finance
Time: 2:30 PM-3:10 PM
Speakers: Jessica Lin, Co-Founder, Work-Bench | Michaela Lehr, Sr. Director of Strategic Finance & Analytics, Movable Ink | Meghan Gill, VP of Sales Ops, MongoDB | Sanj Sanampudi, Founder/CEO, Concert Finance
A well-designed sales compensation (comp) plan remains one of the most fundamental aspects in balancing heightened employee performance with managing expenses. This session will bring together minds from four leading technology companies in venture capital, communications, open-source document management, and financial analytics to discuss effective sales comp plan models. Incentives, flat commissions, and varying mixed compensation methodologies are all on the agenda as the panel will break down how to properly motivate exceptional performance while maintaining a sound management structure.
Presentation: Lessons from Logikcull: $0 to $10M in 19 Months: The How, When & Why + 10 Mistakes Along the Way
Time: 2:30 PM-3:10 PM
Speaker: Andy Wilson, CEO, Logikcull
Logikcull’s mantra of “instant discovery” has helped reshape the way legal professionals store and locate their documents. CEO and Co-Founder Andy Wilson will dive into how the company reached the status it has today, having the ability to accommodate firms of all sizes while leveraging cloud-based technology to rapidly generate significant capital. Charging users by storage units, as opposed to utilizing a traditional subscription-based model, has allowed Logikcull to scale its offerings and led to the company raising more than $25M while expanding their employee base by 500% in the past two years. Wilson shares both the successes and failures he and his company have faced along the way.
Wednesday, February 6
Presentation: Top Lessons Learned in Getting to $100M ARR with Adaptive Insights, a Workday Company
Time: 11:15 AM-11:45 AM
Speaker: Tom Bogan, CEO, Adaptive Insights
Adaptive Insights CEO Tom Bogan is one of the most experienced enterprise software executives at SaaStr Annual 2019. Having held different finance roles across several landmark SaaS organizations, he will discuss successfully growing a SaaS company by navigating opportunities and obstacles like data analysis, organizational strategy, and funding. He understands the importance of business strategy and the impacts finance leaders have on their organizations beyond the numbers, and is thus especially relatable to the modern CFO.
EXTERNAL EVENT
Title: The Modern SaaS Finance Summit
Time: 8:30 AM-4:30 PM
Sponsors: Deloitte | FloQast | Sage Intacct
Although not affiliated with SaaStr, The Modern SaaS Finance Summit is a great option for SaaS folks specifically interested in finance. This event is designed for CFOs, Controllers, Revenue Operations, and Finance leaders who want to learn best practices, automate processes, forecast on critical growth metrics, and scale their commercial models. The day will feature a collection of talks by industry leaders centered on automating and growing SaaS and Subscription Finance businesses.
Thursday, February 7
Presentation: Lessons from Carta: The Pitch Deck from our $42M Series C Round
Time: 11:45 AM-12:15 PM
Speaker: Henry Ward, CEO & Founder, Carta
Henry Ward, CEO of the capitalization table management software company Carta, will present how he and his company drew C Round investments from venture capital firms Menlo Ventures and Social Capital. C Round funding remains a highly critical period for startup companies, as its success or failure largely determines the likelihood of attracting an acquisition or setting the stage for a public offering. Lessons learned from generating a substantial financial endorsement from multiple firms should be value added to any startup finance pro.
Presentation: How to Lie (to Yourself) with SaaS Statistics: Lessons from DFJ
Time: 1:15 PM-1:45 PM
Speaker: Josh Stein, Partner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
With the advent of so many SaaS organizations and a global, hyper-connected market, mastering the metrics goes well beyond observing static financial data. The decisions and activities of one department affect many others, which means that finance leaders must develop greater strategic vision. Josh Stein of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) covers new ways to look at the data driving your decision making process, and reveals both how and why you should view your SaaS numbers differently.
Presentation: WePay: How to Acquire a World-Class $400B Company
Time: 1:45 PM-2:15 PM
Speakers: Bill Clerico, CEO & Co-Founder, WePay | Tina Hsiao, Chief Operating Officer, WePay
Boston-based payment software WePay processes billions of dollars per year for a variety of platforms like GoFundMe, MeetUp, and Zoho. WePay partners with over 1,000 businesses and non-profit organizations across several countries and serves as prominent example of how the right software solution at the right time can experience meteoric growth. The company’s executive team of Bill Clerico and Tina Hsiao tell the narrative of how WePay raised more than $9M in its first two years and several hundred million more since.
All Three Days
Not a presentation but...Teampay will also be at SaaStr! If you’re craving a coffee and want more information about the first technology-enabled purchasing software, book time with us here.
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