SaaS founders explain why SaaStr Annual matters to them. Entrepreneurship is isolating, but the conference connects them with peers and mentors who share war stories and practical advice on sales and customer success. One founder skipped the Falcon Heavy launch to attend.
Chapters
My first impression was because this is awesome. I think sometimes entrepreneurship and startups can feel really lonely, and when you come to communities like SaaStr, you find that actually that there are lots of people.
We heard about it a lot on social media, from our investors, from our partners, everyone's talking about it.
I think all founders go through these same set of journeys of near-death experiences. We all almost failed, that we all almost went bankrupt multiple times. We're sharing our mistakes, we're sharing our learnings. I'm stunned that thousands of founders and CEOs are willing to share, and that's what makes SaaStr special. People are willing to share, and who knew?
A lot of entrepreneurs are like, "Hey, we've been through this." Kind of like an older sibling, right, telling you, "Don't do this because it's going to mess you up." I found that everyone's talking about their mistakes, and everyone's talking about practical information and best practices that you can actually take, relate to, and apply.
I think that's what's really been inspiring is some of the things that you just kind of stumble on are being shared by other members. You come into this space, you have to know you're not alone and find like-minded peers, and I think that's what the SaaS community is really helping establish internationally.
We have folks coming from all over the world, and it's even more the case this year. I think the word is out. SaaStr is the place to be for anything SaaS-related.
Attending SaaStr has really helped our business and the team. It's also given us a chance to network, peer, meet very similar companies, and share war stories.
So many of the founders came with the entire team, and they divide and conquer. You have the sales team going to that track, the customer success team going to that track and learning and getting all those best practices. So I see that as the perfect learning opportunity and education opportunity for your team as you're building a SaaS business.
SaaS companies are hard. There were a number of times the first 2 or 3 years we ran out of money, people kind of worked for nothing. Community like SaaS are so fundamental, right? We're all looking for our tribe and we're all trying to find people that are going through what we're going through because if I can find other people that I can share these stories with and they can give me some advice, that's critical.
There's a reason they say the CEO role is lonely at the top because to some extent you can't talk to your team about every challenge and obstacle that you face. You can't share that with your family necessarily. It creates a peer mentorship opportunity, I think, It also helps you think about how to disrupt yourself before somebody else does. It's a long journey building a company.
I have had some incredible mentors that have just saved my life over and over. I think the mentoring piece of that, the sharing of the wisdom, passing that along, really does help people avoid gigantic unnecessary mistakes.
At the end of the day, whatever business you do, you might be in healthcare, energy, education, um, We're all people, human beings, and we're trying to build something.
I was really excited about the Falcon Heavy launch. I had tickets to go, and I was supposed to speak at SASTR, and I had to choose between them, and I chose to go to SASTR.
