SaaStr Annual 2022: Attendee Know Before You Go Webinar

YouTube. YouTube. Okay, I think that worked. I think we are. All right, we look live on the internet.

Live on YouTube.

Live on YouTube, streaming worldwide. Let me share our slides here. I'll go into present mode here. Cool. Thanks everyone for joining us as we get geared up for SASRA Annual. I hope you know Jason M. Lemkin, who's our SASRA CEO and founder, who's joining me here kindly to do our Know Before You Go webinar, Survival Guide to SASRA Annual. It is literally 2 exact weeks away.

2 weeks away, assuming you watch this video today. What if you watch it like next week?

Then how long?

Then it'll be even closer. It'll be even closer. So it's sometime away. It's September 13th through 15th in, in San Mateo, California, right?

Correct. Yeah, we'll get into all the details.

We'll get into the details. Okay, I'll be quiet. Okay, I got it.

I don't know, um, I, any— I was gonna say anything you want to say. Um, we are celebrating 10 years of SASTR.

10 years of SASTR.

Wow. Yeah, anything you want to say to folks who might be joining or watching later?

Well, just thanks for folks that are coming. Thanks for folks for being part of SASTR for 10 years, for reading this content millions and millions of times. And for coming to the 8th SaaStr Annual. And thanks for folks sticking with us through the crazy times of 2020. Uh, 2020 was tough. We did have to cancel SaaStr Annual 2020 the night before, which was brutal. Amelia can't even think about it. And then somehow last year we had the only event in all of tech in the Bay Area. We had like 5,000 or 6,000 folks come, which was crazy, but it was so fun because, um, we had to do it outdoors, right? And we learned we wanted to reboot SaaStr as this outdoor collegiate festival event and get out of the convention center. And so this year we're perfecting it. It'll be almost twice as big as last year on a 40 to 50 acre campus. It's going to be pretty awesome that Amelia will tell you about. But again, thanks. Thank you for everyone that's coming. It's going to be awesome.

Yeah, epic. All right, um, cool. We've got over 8,000 people already registered, so thanks to those who are joining this webinar live, and hello to those who will watch it later. Um, we should have more than 10,000 people come on site, so There's a lot to get through. Please drop any questions you have about the events. We can't really answer like investment questions at this moment, but if you have questions on SaaStr or the annual, drop them into the chat. We'll do some Q&A at the end, and we're super pumped. It'll be our biggest SaaStr annual yet. Good. Yeah, cool. We will be at the San Mateo County Event Center this year. So if you came last year at all, It is the same venue and campus as last time. We are using a bit more of it this time, so a little bit has changed, which we'll get into. But keep this location in mind. Save it in your phone. San Mateo County Event Center. It is something for the— for out-of-towners, it is sometimes called the San Mateo County Convention Center. Sometimes it's also called the fairgrounds. It's a little confusing. They're one and the same. As long as you're going to 2495 Delaware Street, you'll be at the right place. There's also going to be a ton of signage, so once you get down there, As you can see the fence line that Jason's in front of, you'll start seeing signs for South Granville, including like traffic signs, fence signs, lots of people pointing in the right direction. So that will help. A quick note, we will be outside this year. Not sure if everyone knows that. If you didn't come last year, we are gonna be outside again this year. It's festival style. To quote other people, it's been called the Coachella of sounds, if you will. It's kind of like an outdoor music festival. It's outside. There's a lot of tenting. There are some indoor spaces for, you know, some chillier mornings, and if you need to take a break from the sun. But, you know, we are gonna have 10,000 people in the Bay Area, so we figured we would enjoy the nice weather and take it outside again this year. There's a lot of elbow room, but it does get a little chilly. In the early mornings and the evenings, so definitely bring layers. I know a lot of our sponsors do like specific swag that is geared towards the outdoors. A lot of them give away like sunglasses, hats, etc. Still good to bring those if you want to make sure you have it handy. Sunscreen also usually handy when the haze burns off from the morning bayareaness. Anything to add here, Jason?

No, actually, I think this is a great picture. Just, just, um, and there's a lot to cover, but I think the right dress code is what these two folks have.

Correct. Yeah.

In these black t-shirts, you know, some kind of comfortable pants and something short sleeve is great. Yeah, polo or whatever, because from 10 to 5 or 4, it's gonna be nice and warm. But if you get there early, there's a chill in the air. And if you stay, especially for the big party, you're gonna want a jacket. So this woman that's got like her fleece on her arm, wherever she is there, This is, this is how I would come, the jacket, but with short sleeves and pants and comfy shoes. This, this is the official outfit of SaaStr Annual.

Yeah, that's a good call out. We are very business casual at the event. There is a coat check, so if you do bring your coat, you can also stash it for later in the day if you don't want to carry it around during the day. So that makes it a lot easier. You can also stash your bag there, you know, extra swag you get. There's a coat check every day. And on the last day, you can bring it for your luggage, etc., or once you get there. So there is an onsite coat check you guys can use for that, which is handy. Real quick on health and safety, not gonna get too much into the C word here, but this is a fully vaccinated event, just as a reminder. We have a lot of cool health and safety guidelines here to safely gather 10,000+ people over 3 days. At the San Mateo County Event Center. So just some reminders here if you have not been able to deep dive and read our full health and safety guidelines as of yet. I know many of you have and have already pre-uploaded your vaccination proof, so thank you to the 2,000 people who already did that. That is super epic. The more of you who can do this, the better, and the speedier your check-in will be. It'll be a lot easier. So yes. First and foremost, it is— these are stackable, so it's vaccine plus negative COVID test plus daily temperature checks. I know we've gotten some questions lately, is it either or? They are stacked, so you do have to meet all these requirements for health and safety guidelines. So just first on proof of vaccination, you will have needed to be boosted, so at any point if you were boosted that is good to get you in. Or if you received your vaccination recently for various reasons, if you have been, you know, partially vaccinated within the last 270 days in your sequence, that is okay too. Or thirdly, and this is more for our international folks and some folks here, if you've recently had COVID and you have what internationally is known as a recovery certificate, because, you know, about 40% of our international attendance is international. They call it a recovery certificate overseas. We call it a doctor's letter here. This is basically just a signed note from your doctor saying you had COVID on a certain date and that you recovered recently. Um, so yes, those are the requirements to come in. Um, I know a big question we've gotten lately on the boosters is there are some folks looking to get their booster pre-annual. Is there any sort of wait period? The wait period was kind of like an older guideline we had for some of our previous events. There's not a wait period, and in fact, we will have an on-site mobile vaccine this year, which is new to SASTRA Annual and any SASTRA event. It's the first time we're doing it. We've got some cool partners at Lookout Health who are coming on site to run a— they're running it, not us, like the medical professionals will be coming to run a mobile vaccine. It's going to be on Monday and Tuesday. We'll get into what's going on on Monday later. But it will be there Monday and Tuesday, so if you need to get your booster, you can come get it on site. They will boost you and then that will be your booster that will be acceptable for entry into SAASTR Annual. So that's super cool. You don't even have to go to CVS first. You can just come directly to SAASTR Annual on Monday or Tuesday and come get vaccinated there. They'll be there for 4 hours each day and ready to go. So there will be, you know, hopefully that will help. With some of the boosters. Um, next, again, it's stackable, so you will need to have a proof of negative COVID test within your 72 hours of first entrance. We've gotten a lot of questions about this. It's whenever you first enter into SASRA Annual. So many— some of you come for all 3 days, the majority of you. Some of you only come for a day. Some of you are sponsors and you come early. So it's 72 hours upon your first entrance to SASRA Annual. Only you will know when that will be. But you can bring an at-home test with you. So anything over the counter is cool with us, or any sort of lab, you know, PCR, antigen tests. If you're coming, again, internationally, some of you might have to do this anyway. So just bring that proof of negative COVID test with you. Couple things here. If you're doing an at-home, like over-the-counter test and it's not one of the ones that does like a lab result for you, just take a photo of it within the 72 hours of your first entry. With next to your ID. So take a photo of the result next to your ID, assuming it's negative, right? So if it's positive, tell us and we'll refund you because then you can't come. So that's how you do it with like any at-home test kit. We highly recommend that people do this before you come to South Triennial because you do never know. You might be asymptomatic. We have this happen a lot in Europa. A lot of attendees would pretest before they got on site so that they knew that they'd be able to get in. It's always rather safe than sorry. We will have testing on site. However, please expect to wait. You know, the tests, as you guys know, they all take about 15 minutes just for the results after the administration. And so really important that you bring your test as much as possible. One, just to make sure you can get in, right? You never know. And two, just to avoid any lines on site. Anything there, Jason, to add?

Yeah, that's good. Let me just summarize because we have learned a lot about this and our processes here have evolved over the year. So two things I just want to— one is, um, the fastest way to get in, the fastest way to get in is to upload your proof of vaccination right into the mobile app, right? And to take your own test, just grab one at CVS, take a photo with your ID next to it, then you'll have that and you will fly through registration because you will have uploaded your vaccination and you will have already taken a test 72 hours ahead of time. That's, that's, that's the insider's guide to getting in fast. However, everyone's getting in. Okay, if you didn't upload your proof of vaccination, you really should, but you can show it at registration, correct, Amelia? If you have to, it's gonna take a lot longer, right? If you do not bring a COVID test, we will have digital testing. It will still take time, but it's even faster than in the past, but it takes time. So if you wanna fly through it, just, we've all done this before now, just upload a picture of your vaccination and upload this test and you will fly through the line. But unlike prior annuals, everyone's going to get in. We're going to have an on-site mobile vax van, so if there's any issues, you can even get vaccinated on site, right? You get vaccinated and tested on site. Everyone will be able to get in no matter what the policies are in your home country or your state or wherever. And finally, I know some people do react to this. They don't want to be in a vaccinated event. Let us know, we'll refund you. And just a final point on that. We did this, obviously, last year, yesterday, annual. Everyone was very supportive. Then we did it in Europe. People were mostly supportive, but times changed earlier in June. But we did some surveys, and for folks that want to know, people were 10 to 1 more comfortable being at a large event with this policy, 10 to 1. And the 1 complain a lot. They're on Twitter, they're on social media, and we do respect people's views. But 10 times more people were far more comfortable being at an outdoor fully vaccinated event than weren't. And that's why we're sticking with it even when Dreamforce and others haven't. And we'll revisit this next year, but it's that 10 to 1 ratio in this world. It's 'cause you're gonna know that every single person at Annual has been tested and vaccinated, and it will be about as safe as any environment is gonna exist, especially being outdoors for an event. But that's why we do it, that 10 to 1 ratio today. So, you know, you can challenge it, you can disagree, but we know for our community, 10 times more people appreciate being extra safe than don't. So we can go on to the next point, but you will get in. Just try to get in fast with the proof and the testing ahead of time.

It's literally less than 60 seconds if you do those two things. So it's pretty quick. Okay. Um, the San Mateo County Events Center, for those who've never been, that we take over for all of Fast Training 2022, is 40 acres. It's quite big. There will be ways to get around. We'll have on-site trams this year that will be going in a loop, so you can jump on the tram at any point. It's like the tram at Disneyland. There will be pedicabs on campus, so you can ask them to take you where you need to go. So there'll be plenty of ways to get around the campus if you're trying to go from, you know, one side of the venue all the way to the other. There's a lot of on-site transportation to get you from point A to point B. But it's pretty big space, so we'll kind of walk you through a few of the spaces that we have and call out some of the fun things. There are a lot of stages which we'll point out. I think first and foremost, we'll cover this a bit more in another slide, but registration. So these are letter B on this map. We have 2 entrances for registration this year. Basically the San Mateo County Event Center, as you can kind of tell by Jason's video, is, is large, so there's multiple ways When you approach it, depending on which side your Uber or your rideshare comes from, you might be on one side of the campus or the other. That's totally fine. There's two— there's two registration entrances this year. You'll see a lot of signage for it. So no matter what side of the street you come on, you'll be able to come in and get your badge. So that's first and foremost for getting in every day. Our sponsors we love will be in our outdoor sponsor hall. It is tented. There's a lot of tents in the sponsor hall where you can interact with our partners. And we also have this one that was actually the hub. I know it sounds odd if you've been to things like a Dreamforce or like an Adobe Summit where the sponsor hall is more hidden away. It's actually a main hub for us, a main thoroughfare. So it is your main path once you register to going through to our stages on the east side. So that's Stage A and Stage B. That'll be the way to get to those will be through the sponsor hall. There's also a huge, huge, huge cantina in the sponsor hall. So it's a really cool like kombucha on tap bar, live music, DJ. There's all 3 sponsors. We love stages in there. So there are 3 stages in the cantina. It's got food at lunchtime. It's got snacks during the day. The cantina is a cool space that a lot of people used last year to hang out. It is a cool hub and a really big space there. So the Cantina is a literal cantina. Our Brain Dates, which is one of our main networking platforms, is also in the sponsor hall this year. It came last year. It was in a slightly different place, but we centralized it here. There'll be one centralized place for Brain Date check-ins. I know some folks have been asking, where do I check in for like a one-on-one Brain Date or a group Brain Date or Super Brain Date, they're all in the same spot. You're gonna go to that big letter E. Once you get on campus, you'll see big signs for it, for Brain Date, as well as some flags, and the Brain Date team will help you get checked in. You can book a Brain Date on campus, so we'll go through in a little bit how you can sign up beforehand. New in Sponsor Hall this year, we added something called the Safterno pool. It's kind of a pool. There's no actual water, but it is a pool-inspired place to come hang out and charge up. There'll be some charging lounge stations there. So if you need a place in the sponsor hall to charge your laptop, the node pool is a good place to go hang out there. Well, coming over to the left, we have Fashion Square Park. So as you walk through the back of Stage A, you'll see these huge roll-up doors that'll be open inviting you into Fashion Square Park. This is our adult playground, if you will. It's completely turfed. We got, you know, a lot of cool couches and lounge areas. It's a fun place to come hang out if you wanna like have a conversation with someone and hang out. Sassafras Square Park is a good place to do it. Our adoptable dogs are in there, so you can meet a furry friend or two. We're also gonna be doing like a game board style livestream there, so you can kind of see what's going on on the other stages. If you're like, this is a lot of content, you can go in there and watch it and hang out. So that's the play area. There's—

And we added that this is new this year, the Sassafras Square Park, Amelia. So if you want to—

Yeah.

Schedule meetings with folks to come. There's— you can obviously tell people to meet you at the large tree by the, uh, the wall, but Sassafras Square Park is set up for that. It's a great place where, unlike the co-working space, which is quieter, you can have folks meet. There'll be tons of tables, tons of place to talk. So if you want to set up a one-on-one meeting or schedule some meetings, this is a good place to do it. Just say, meet me at Sassafras Square Park, and that's a great place to meet.

Yeah, it's a great place for meetings. Yeah, it is set up for that. And there's a lot of tables and like little pods for people to meet in small groups. And so that's a great place to do that. And there will be snacks, of course, and coffee. So it's nice to go there for that. The coworking space is a big mini WeWork, if you will. So there's a lot of power tables. It is a bit more quieter in there, to Jason's point. So that's where if you want to go, like, you know, write some emails, got to get a little bit of work done, but you're not doing a Zoom call, go into the coworking space. If you need to take a Zoom, do it in Sashko Park. So that's like kind of the work and play area there. We've got 2 more stages right outside of the coworking space. That is our workshop stage and our Q&A stage. You'll see it because it'll be ringed by our SAS Celebrity Walk of Fame. So you'll see these super colorful decals. Once you see those, you'll know you're in the right space for workshop and the Q&A stage. You'll also see a giant art car. It looks like a pirate ship. So if you're looking for one of these stages, just look for the pirate ship and you will be in the right place. And yes, you can watch the content from the pirate ship. So that will be fun if you wanna do that.

Just to note for folks that were here last year or before, one of the things in the past that was super popular was having some of our top hands-on speakers do Q&A afterwards. We have, we did that before. So we've brought that back this year on this Q&A stage. So it will be lit. With folks that come off their sessions on the Masters or Legends stage to do deep dives. So if you really want to ask folks questions, you can follow a lot of the speakers here after their sessions, or just hang out here if you want to have the Q&A experience. It's always popular. In the past, we weren't able to do it outdoors last year, but we brought it back, and people do love the Q&A stage. So get your questions answered here.

Yep, that's a good call out. The Midway Picnic is exactly as it sounds. There's like lawn games, there's food. There's picnic tables. If you're looking for a great place to chill in the shade, this is one of those, and you don't mind working outside. This is again another great place to meet up too if you guys want to meet outside and grab a bite. Midway Picnic is a good place to go. Um, and then I'll call it one of our last main stages, which is the Plaza Stage here. This is our huge tented expert stage. You'll see it right past the Midway Picnic, um, if you're looking for content that is on that stage. So a lot of stages. And then one thing that's not pictured here is we do have a bonus area. It's a not-so-secret speakeasy. The entrance is hidden. So once you find the entrance, there will be spritzes in there. There's gonna be music in there. It's gonna be a cool hangout area. It's like our secret bar. So yeah, if you can find the speakeasy, I encourage you all to try and find it. It is somewhere on this campus.

Only 40 acres. It can't be hard to find.

I know, it can't be that hard to find.

Only 40 acres.

And of course we wouldn't be here without our amazing sponsors we love. This is a deep dive and zoomed in version of our sponsor hall map. As you can see, you can kind of see the hub style a little bit better. So you can see where registration comes in through our sponsors. We do have an art car in the sponsor hall. It is a main thoroughfare. Again, it's the access point to Stage B and Stage A. As well as the canteen is within the bounds of the Swamper Hall. Brain Dates are over here, so if you're looking for Brain Dates, they're kind of on your way to Stage A, if you will. And then we also have these cool lounges, so we've got some of these lounges here underneath Brax that are for different functions. They're informal kind of lounges, so more for like if you want to meet founders, you know, come to the Founders Lounge.

And we do have like an Inclusion Lounge here formally this year, don't we, Amelia?

We do, it's this one. Yeah, right, right, right, Sarah. Cool. Yeah, we do have a formal inclusion lounge too for everyone who's coming as part of our program.

Uh, on that, just briefly, one thing, then I'll— you're probably gonna hit it, but for folks that have, have, haven't been in a while, um, uh, or haven't been before, really the heart, what's really become the heart of SASster starting last year, and then we really perfected it in Barcelona in June, is these brain dates down at the bottom. And We've always wanted networking to be the heart of Annual, and it really has become that. And in Europe in June, and to some extent last year, literally these were lit up and booked from dusk until dawn. Everyone, everyone. And we already have almost 1,000 Brain Dates, Amelia, is that right? It was like 890 as of yesterday. So we'll have well over 1,000, right? In Europe alone, I think there were 4,000 meetings that happened. And so literally, especially if you're a solo visitor, if you're not an extrovert, I'm not an extrovert, There's few better things than you can do is spend a few hours or even all day in the Brain Dates. You can go into the app, right? And you can register for as many as you want today. And they're typically microtopics, right? Really niche topics, which sometimes are even of more value than learning how to build a $100 billion company. Learn actually how to get points on the board right now. But there's hundreds and hundreds of these topics and they vary from one-on-ones to super Brain Dates or what, 20-on-ones, Amelia? Something like that?

20. Yeah.

20. And they're all different shapes and sizes with different types of speakers from directors to VPs to CEOs. But people love this and this will continue to be our heart and soul, these meetings. So if you do nothing else at SaaStr, you register for these before, but if you don't or get confused or don't know where the mobile app is, you can still— there's on-site registration, there's great guides and they will help you look at everything and sign up. But they do fill up, right? The Brain Dates do fill up more than the bigger sessions. So registering today or this week or early is always a good thing. But you could literally spend the whole event right here on Brain Dates. And I think you'll have an A+ experience. Yeah, you'll have an A+. That and the can— you can hang out at the cantina. You literally could skip everything else and meet some amazing people and be ROI positive. I think if you just stayed in this cantina braindate area.

That's true. It's pretty good combo. Okay. There's a lot of speakers and content. We have over 300 speakers and 175 live sessions. There's no way we could use them all today. So we have the full agenda that's on sasterannual.com. Hopefully you've seen it by now. One thing to know is you don't need to register for sessions. It does help us to see who's coming to which session so we can figure out which sessions are of interest and the content that's of interest. It does help guarantee you a seat. So in order to do that, you can do it on the mobile app, as Jason has mentioned, or you can use that link right on the agenda. If you log in with your ticket, you can save your seat right from there. There's a lot of speakers and content over 3 days. So just as a super, super high level, because again, this is like I think the most content we've ever had at a single master event. Everyone in SAS will be here for Tuesday, just so folks know. A lot of the content is in the afternoon on purpose. So it's kind of your— the idea is to come in and do a brain date, as Jason M. Lemkin mentioned, meet someone new before you go to the more formal content. And also chat with the sponsors, you know, meet up with your teams. A lot of people use SaaStr as like an offsite last year. So you have some time to come in the morning, do that before the formal content starts in the afternoon on Tuesday. But the formal content that is there is really, really good. These are what we call our mastermind sessions. So these are some of the most popular speakers throughout the year, or people who people asked us a lot to come to SaaStr Annual who are speaking all on this Hey, there's a lot. There's Drift, there's Gusto, there's Y Combinator, there's Mark Roberge, who is always, always popular. Atlassian, Algolia. We're doing Growth Day Q&A. There's a lot going on this day.

Yep. So Tuesday is designed to be a little bit more intimate. We have, we have, we have more, a handful of masterminds that are top performers, right? That we know they're our top decile speakers. From the past or will be. So come hear them. We'll be really focused together. You can come early in the morning for registration, which you'll probably hit too, right? But no, there's no real formal content before lunch on Tuesday, right? There's nothing really going on before lunch, right? So you can do a bit of a slow roll, especially if you've already gotten registered before then. So you're not overwhelmed on day 1.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we built in some— people were asking us to build in some time. We meet up with our teams and do brain dates in the morning. So we did that. Coming into Wednesday. Now, this is the big day. All 8 stages are going. Just a reminder, we do record all of our sessions. So if you miss one, you know, I know you can't multiply yourself. We'll send you— we'll send all the attendees the recordings afterwards. We drop them out on sas.com, as you guys have seen from our other events. There's a lot going on this day. Almost Too much to go through even on this slide. But I think some highlights, Jason speaking with Ben Chestnut from Mailchimp. We've got the Stripe CTO, we've got Cloudflare, we've got Divi CRO. It is a C, there is a CRO track this day. So notice there's quite a few CROs.

So many of the best CROs today, this day, right? So many CROs, right? These ones are super popular. Cloudflare, Deal, just picking them all up. Who else do we have? We have a ton, right? Yeah, they're super pop. I don't know how many we've got, like 7 or 8 CROs here to Yeah, there's quite a few.

So yeah, there's a whole CRO track, you know, Grammarly is coming this day, Mailchimp is this day, Snowflake is this day. There's a lot going on this day, so pace yourself, but do come early because content starts early this day, bright and early at 9:00. Jason will see you all for the kickoff. Yep.

And there'll be an early, for folks that watch this, I, we'll try to have some early morning networking if you wanna come early. So you can come as early as 8:00. So if you wanna make that extra connection when things are quiet, come at 8 o'clock and meet a few great people.

Yeah, Reg will be open. We'll be open for you. We'll be ready. Okay. Third and final day of SaaStr Annual, Thursday, September 15th, is always money day. Some call it VC day, some call it money day. They're the same. Lots of VC content. State of the Cloud is back with Bessemer. Jason's doing a new State of the Markets after some popular tweets And HubSpot co-founders are making a surprise, not so secret surprise appearance this day as well. Yeah.

And, and like, it looks like we'll have Andreessen Horowitz, Norwest, Initialized, Lightspeed, Benchmark, just about everyone you could possibly imagine, right? So, and, and there'll be There's also, you probably hit it, there is a Meet a VC program for founders, right? So you can apply on the SaaStrangia website or in-app, and we've got over 1,000 VCs coming to annual. So apply, upload your metrics and your data, and folks will reach out to you. But Thursday, even if you're not fundraising, if you just wanna learn how venture capital works, how the system works, how to take advantage of the system, how to make sure the system doesn't take advantage of you, Over half the content here will all be about how money works, but then we'll have incredible sessions, right? The founders of HubSpot, we'll have Revenue Confidential, what some of the top CROs really talk about, and more and more. So there's plenty to do, but these are the secrets to how money works in SaaS and cloud.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of a few things that Jason has mentioned that's going on all 3 days, Brain Dates. So sign up for Brain Dates. These are, you know, one-on-ones, one-on-fours, which are small groups, or the super Brain Dates. No matter the size of the Brain Date that you sign up to do, it is all about learning and sharing with one another. So there's 2 things you should do. If you click this link, it is just sapsterannual.braindate.com. You're just going to use the same login and email as your ticket. It's super easy to get in. Once you, you know, assuming you're attending, it's super easy to get in. 2 things you should do. One, you should join an existing Brain Date. So once you come in, And let me pause my share here and see if I can do it a little bit in real time right here. So yeah, I'll resume my share here. So yeah, this is the Fast Brain Oil Marketplace. So you'll see two things to do once you come in. One, you can see there's already 448 topics on here. There's even more people on here in the people tab, but there's a bunch of topics on here. You can come in and join a brain date. So these are the existing topics that are already on here. One of the things I like to do is you can click one of these trending ones to kind of see the Brain Dates that are already either almost full or filling really fast. This is a great way to do it with the categories that are up here at the top, super easy. You can also find the super Brain Dates easy this way, or to Jason's point, if you want to, you know, meet some investors, you can click venture capital, and so on and so forth. So that's a great way to sort it there. The other thing you're going to want to do, that's number one, is to join a Brain Date. Two is to make your own Brain Date and meet with people at Sastre Annual so you can create your own topic at your own time and have people join you as, as you as the host instead of you as the guest.

And everyone's an expert in something that's coming.

That's true.

Everyone's an expert in something. It's fun to do your own, own Brain Date too.

It is fun. Yeah. So yep, make a brain date topic. So that's the two things to do. Join one, make, make, make one, and you can make a few actually. And yeah, please plan on— you can plan on doing these now. So as you saw, it's live. There are people starting to network now to get a jumpstart on networking. You can sign up on site, which they do fill up some of the smaller ones. So always good to do it in advance and then you'll go to the huge Brain Date Lounge. To check in and have your Brain Date. We did link here some of the most popular Brain Date sessions so far. So you can see some heavy hitters here, you know, Bessemer, Battery Ventures, WorkRamp, Snowflake, there's some Carta, there's some really great people you can meet in the Brain Dates on like a very specific topic. So we linked a few of these here if you want to, you know, once we link you guys the slides. Yeah, if you want to join some of these and to give you a flavor of what's on the platform already. Another way to meet investors is our formal Meet a VC program. So there are a lot of investors on Brain Dates. There's a lot of VC content on Thursday, which you can sign up for. The third way is our formal Meet a VC program. You can join as a founder CEO or as an investor. What we do is we connect some of the qualifying CEOs and founders with our top-tier investors who are coming to SaaStr Annual to meet one another through a series of double opt-in meetings. Basically what this means, if you're a founder, you can click this link here, just go to SaaStr Annual and click the, um, Meet a VC link, submit your criteria there. If you're an investor, on the flip side, you'll tell us what you're looking for in terms of funding. What we do is we're gonna send each of our, um, investors a list of the CEOs that roughly meet their criteria. So some people are like, I only want APAC, or some people only want EMEA, some people only do, you know, US, some people do only female founders. We basically take in all their criteria, give them a segmented list. So if you meet those criteria, you'll be on it. And if they want to meet with you, we'll help them facilitate a double opt-in meeting on site during SaaStr Annual. So we have done this program since 27. Yeah. Yeah.

So just a quick point on this, you can, you know, we'll probably end up, uh, I think we end up with 400 or 500 of each side in this roughly, right? 400 or 500 CEOs, founders, and 400 or 500 VCs. Um, some folks are like, well, why didn't I get 20 VCs that want to give me term sheets? It doesn't work that way in the real world, and it doesn't work that way in SaaS. What you will get is everyone will read your submission. So make it great. Like, put— we do ask that you include a deck, you include some metrics, you include your stage. Just like any pitch out there, like any sales pitch, make it great. And the great ones all get tons of meetings. Now look, if you're, if you're at a million ARR this year and last year at 2 and the year before you were at 4, I don't think you're getting a lot of meetings. If you're in terminal decline and your burn rate's high, we can't fix that. But the better the submission, the more meetings you will get. And We are hounded by VCs asking for this list, like it is too much from the top firms. They're not always— and so if it is great, you are, even if you don't get meetings, it's going to get read. You're going to get hundreds of folks see that you are raising. So make it great. And even if you don't get 50 term sheets, you will get reviewed by hundreds of VCs. That's point number 1. Point number 2, you don't have to be fundraising this week to apply. It is, you know, I would say if you want to raise money at all, or if you're interested in the next 18 to 24 months, especially these days when things have cooled down, it's good to get to know people. And not every VC wants to write a check that day. Everyone can write a check today, every VC. But it's okay to participate in this if you think you might want to raise, right? And that's okay. Include yourself, opt in. It can only help. So just a few comments, but make it great and hundreds of folks will read about you. Hundreds of investors with checkbooks in SaaS will read about you.

Yep, good point. OK, for coming to SAS Reunions, there's some stuff you can do free. You can sign up for sessions. You can book a brain date. You can do meet and be seen. Some of you have been asking us, where and when can I come get my badge? Because you are that excited. So this is posted on our website in the attendee portal. But just to briefly touch on it, Um, if you'll be in town early, you can come get your badge starting Sunday, September 11th. So badge pickup, as well as health and safety, including the COVID testing, will be open from 12:30 to 4:30, um, on both sides of the San Mateo County Event Center on Sunday. So if you're in town, or if you're, you know, you're just getting to town this day and you just want to get out of the way, you can come in on Sunday. We'll also have Day Zero badge pickup, which will be on Monday, September 12th. So there's actually two locations for this. There's our main location at the San Mateo County Event Center where we're hosting annual. Both sides will be open basically all day from 11 to 7. Come, you know, reg is open, health and safety is open. You can get tested, get your badge, or show us your proof as Jason mentioned, and breeze through and have your badge ready go. We'll also have satellite registration this day, so if you can't quite make it over to the event center and you're staying at Crowne Plaza or nearby, you can come to the Crowne Plaza, which is maybe 10 minutes away from the venue, where we have our satellite registration in the hotel.

Yep, and it's pretty— you can breeze through registration if you come on Monday or Sunday, right? It's pretty quiet, so you breeze through. So we do literally— we do everything humanly possible to minimize lines. We hate lines at events. We have massive amounts of registration. We invest probably 5 times more money than anybody else does. But one thing we can say is if you come Monday or Sunday, there's not going to be any lines. We can pretty much guarantee that. So if you possibly are in town, then you can just breeze in on Tuesday and not have to worry about any of this. So if you can, we would all be grateful if you can register early. And we do it so that to avoid all possible lines.

But no stress reg. No stress reg. No stress reg. During the event days, again, there's two sides. So if you're coming in from Saratoga, you'll see our big East lot registration. If you're coming in from this side on Ubers, you'll see our big West lot registration. Both sides will be open starting at 8 AM, so really bright and early before any, you know, brain dates or content starts. We do try and open reg about an hour early before kind of formal agenda— agendas for the day start. But yeah, we'll be open bright and early from 8 all the way to 6 on the first day, Manual Tuesday. Our satellite registration will also be open this day from 7:30 to 7. One thing to know about satellite registration is at the Crown Plaza where our shuttle also is. So I think it's on a later slide, but in case we don't get there, we do have a shuttle to and from the Crown Plaza on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to the San Mateo County Event Center. So Tuesday, if you want to take the shuttle, you can walk in, you know, grab your badge, park, and then just take the shuttle over to campus. Wednesday's a really, really big day with a big party, so we're open from 8 to 7, and then on Thursday we're open from 8 to 3:30 to come and get your badge. One thing I'll say too, as a reminder, you will see signs at registration. Even though there's two registration sets, places to come register, there are three lanes, if you will. It's kind of like being at the airport. Or Disneyland. So when you come, you'll see these giant, giant arches and signs for if you brought your test, that has its own line. If you didn't bring your test because you need to get tested on site, that has its own line. And then you'll see an express lane. So once you do get your badge, the next days you come back, make sure you use that express lane. They're just going to check your temperature and your ID and they get you in. It'll take about all of 15 seconds. So make sure you go into the right lane when you get on site so you're not accidentally waiting in line. In my— cool. A few reminders. I see some people asking in the Q&A what you need to bring with you. You do need to bring your photo ID. So this can be a US license or a valid passport. It's always a good idea to bring a copy of your vaccine proof, even if you uploaded it. Always good to have a photo of it on your phone or your physical card or card equivalent if you want, or your QR code if you're international. You know, your proof of negative COVID test, again, good to always have a copy with you. And then if you have your email confirmation QR code, that will help too, but it's not necessary. It just speeds it up a little. Getting to SAS 3 Annual, there's a few different options. There's on-site parking. You do have to pre-register for parking this year. So we'll send around a link after this of how you do that. It is free, but it is on a first-come, first-served basis. I know there's still space right now, so if you request today, it's— you'll get a spot. So just prerequest that. If you're taking a rideshare, Uber or Lyft, again, there's two entrances. Either one is fine. You can give your Uber driver either one of these addresses at Saratoga or at Delaware. Some of them will already have it preprogrammed, so you tell them San Mateo County Event Center, they'll know where to go. Do keep in mind, we get this a lot from our out-of-towners, the rideshare does surge price during Annual because it is that many people. So if you're trying to avoid a little bit of the surge pricing, I highly recommend even if you are going to take an Uber or Lyft, you can take it to the Crown Plaza and get on the shuttle. That has helped some people get the pricing down. You can, you know, park at Crown Plaza. You can oddly, you know, rent a car, go to Crown Plaza and take the shuttle. We do the shuttle, so it's a great way to get around and get to Sastre Annual if you want to avoid some of those rideshare surge pricing, which happens around big events. So it does happen.

You just expense it.

Or there's that.

Don't worry about it.

Or there's that. You just expense it through Uber Black. Yeah, shuttles all 3 days, the South Annual, 13th, 14th, 15th. Again, going to and from the Crowne Plaza. On Tuesday, they do go to downtown San Mateo for the parties. Which we'll show you in a second. So if you're looking for a way to get to the Tuesday sponsor parties that we're having and the after parties, the shuttles will be going there just on Tuesday. So shuttles are your friend. There's a lot of shuttles. They have a lot of space. They're big and comfy. Take them. So speaking of other events outside of content and speakers, Tuesday night parties. On September 13th, we're hosting some after parties with some of our Sponsors, we're taking over most of downtown San Mateo and just having a bunch of after parties. So there's a bunch of different ones. We're about to post on fasterannual.com how you can sign up for these. We'll link it in the post-webinar email. But there's a lot of different parties here. It's like a— it's a party hopping experience. Yeah, you can jump on the shuttle. Get to downtown San Mateo to get to any one of these. There'll be a lot of fun. There's a lot of food. Some of them are themed, which you'll see. Just a quick note, there are ones, you know, hosted by SAASTR where you'll just need to bring your badge with you. So don't take it off when you get on the shuttle. Others you just have to sign up for. So again, we'll link you guys the full guide of where to sign up for them. They're open to any attendees. Just some of our partners want you to pre-register for them. But yeah, lots of party hopping on Tuesday night. But do pace yourself because Wednesday, my friends, we're very excited about having the big party. The big party is back. Last year we did Cash Cash. This year we're going DJ Duke Dumont. If you don't know of DJ Duke Dumont by name, you do probably know one of his songs either on YouTube. So we link this, you know, look him up on YouTube, look him up on Spotify. He did just play in front of, I think, 120,000 people at the Playa Stage at Coachella this year. He has a residency in Vegas. He's great. His team's been awesome.

I think it was Sahara Stage, Amelia, not Coachella.

Oh, Sahara, you're right.

I believe it was Sahara. I think we need to get this right. He was the head of Sahara. He was the number one act on Sahara Stage at Coachella this year. Off the charts.

Off the charts. We brought him to South Shore Annual. We're very, very, very excited about this. Good.

And folks that are coming solo, is it too late to get a Bring a Buddy pass for Duke Dumont, or can they still get one?

Last call.

Last call. Okay, so if you're watching this, you should have gotten an email. Check your email. They got it. If you're someone like me that prefers to bring a buddy and you don't have a buddy with you, we have extra passes for everyone that's coming, and they can get, they can get into Duke Dumont so you can have a buddy come with you to rock out.

Yes, to rock out. It's gonna be a lot of fun. There's gonna be Thundersticks, there's gonna be neon. Um, it is outside under a tent, so going along with the festival vibe. It's gonna be a ton of fun. It's gonna be a good set. We're super excited. Again, we've been chatting with his team. We're very, very stoked to have him come play the big party. Yes, I'm personally very excited that he's never done a cloud event before. He has not done a cloud.

He's never done it. He's done, he's done, he's done a lot of the top music festivals, but he said he wanted to learn more about SaaS. And he's thinking about putting together a fund. So he's going to do the set for us.

Go, Jella. I think he's done EDC. He's done now. SaaS. Ibiza. And now— After.

He said he heard once Grammarly CEO was coming, he was all in. He said he has a lot of typos. So Grammarly has saved him. It saved many of us.

Save too many of us. All right, on the last day, come back for the breakfast, uh, the VC Day breakfast on Thursday, September 15th. We're going to kick it off with a few different breakfasts, um, meet up with some VCs or meet up, you know, if you're a CEO, come to the CEO and Growth one, meet up with some founders. Just if you haven't, you know, met enough people yet, um, this is a good way to do it on the last day. We do start at 9, a little bit later because, you know, the big party's the night before. There'll be a few different breakfasts here to help jumpstart and kick off the last day. People ask a lot, do people come the last day? They do. You know, last year was one of our most popular day 3s of SaaStr Annual. I expect with our attendance this year and the content that is on day 3 and all the VCs coming that it will also be packed. So people do come on the third day of SaaStr Annual. So keep that in mind. Last final reminders here. There is a SASTR events app, so you can download it. It's just called SASTR events. You can look for it in the App Store or the Android— is it called the Android Store? Android Marketplace. You can tell I have an iPhone. But yeah, just look for SASTR events. You can download it, log in with your email that your ticket is under. And like, as Jason mentioned, you can book your branding through there, book your sessions. See all the speakers, do a bunch of stuff on there. Kind of helpful if you wanna take it with you. Fun stuff just to tease out. We do this thing every year called Faster Buck. It's basically how you get swag at the event, and people love the swag. It's on the next slide. I'll give you a preview since you're attending the webinar. People love the swag. I mean, the water bottles show up everywhere for years. There are people ask if like, can I just buy some of the swag. We don't do swag for purchase, but we do do these Sashster Bucks. So if you want to get extra Sashster Bucks and therefore swag yourself up with Sashster swag, there are ways you can earn additional Sashster Bucks. If you really want to swag yourself up, if you see 2 things you really want instead of 1, or 3 things, earn extra Sashster Bucks. So the first way to do this is if you come get your badge early. Jason M. Lemkin and I have said it's very calm, you know, Sunday and Monday to come and get your badge. If you do that, you'll get an extra 10 denomination Safterbucks, which is cool. If you bring your negative COVID test with you, like, you'll also get extra Safterbucks. And this one's any day. So if you bring it Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday. If you bring your test with you instead of getting tested on site, you'll also get extra Safterbucks. So if you bring your test and you come early, that's— you've already like tripled your SASster points. If you do a brain date, you'll get extra SASster bucks. If you added a trick or tip to our tips and tricks board, which is in the coworking space, you'll also get SASster bucks. So we try and make it a little bit easy, but a little bit of a game so that if you guys do these things or come early, you can get extra swag as a reward for being a good citizen of SAS Re:Invent. This is our cool thing this year. So leave space in your bag, plan what you wanna use your sasterbucks for. There's tote bags. These were super popular at Europa. People love to put their stuff in them throughout the day. There's hats, because again, we're outside, sometimes it gets sunny. There's those, these things on the top right are like squishy balls, like stress relievers. There's fun socks which people love. There's water bottles which I mentioned. There's 3 different t-shirts, not just one, 3. There's a 10-year one because we're celebrating 10 years. There's Safter is my peeps, which is just a fun tagline we used before we knew our match was coming. So now that's kind of extra fun. And then our classic blue Safter shirt with the logo. These hexies that you see here, one of them's a dog toy for anyone who's a pet parent, and one of them is a squishy one if you've got a smaller Safter fan at home. Who wants to have a hexy, hexy, uh, hexy toy with them. So that is our swag. Or what?

For your desk.

For your desk. Yeah.

Yep.

Brand it up. Anything else that I might have missed, Jason? I know we covered a lot.

No, I think you, I think you hit it. It's exciting.

It's exciting. Um, there's just a few questions there which I'll go through. You guys can drop in any other questions you have for us. In the chat, I know people like Q&A. Do booths have a tent over it? Good question. Yeah, all the booths have a tent over it. Some of them have their individual tents, some of them are like longer rows of tents. But yeah, all of our sponsors while you're chatting with them have a tent so that you can chat with them throughout the day. There, so good question. Is SAS Software Park Another place where there are booths? Um, no. So the sponsor hall is just in the east parking lot. It is just in that Sponsors We Love hall. Pull it back up real quick. So if you look at this like this, if you're looking at our campus map, you— we are going to print these campus maps, you guys. So, um, you'll get one once you pick up your badge. Um, so everyone will get a campus map in their Sasterbucks once you get your— along with your badge. It's like one of the must things you get with your badge. Um, you'll get a campus map. Um, the sponsor hall is where all the sponsors are. So if you're looking for someone in particular, you got a meeting with someone in particular, um, you will be in this huge sponsor hall. You can't miss it. It's with all the majority of the Big Ten will be this Cool. Um, okay. How do I look at all the Brain Dates? Great question. I sadly just closed it. But I'll come back here. Brain Dates Saastrø Annual. Yeah, some people are asking for some tips on how to sort and book a Brain Date. So again, saastrøannual.braindate.com. Once you come in here, there's a few different ways to sort. So the default sort, so without me touching anything, the default sort is by most recent. So it's gonna come into most recent people who have just submitted and added their Brain Date topics. If you wanna go through what, again, I kind of showed you guys how to go through what's trending, but if you don't wanna sort it that way, you can just load it up and it'll default you most recent. You can also hit the filter button if you know you just wanna do it on Wednesday of the Asterisk Annual, because that's when you've got it. You could hit apply. There it goes. So this filter thing, this Filter Buddy is your friend, just because there are a lot of brain dates in the marketplace. You can also search, which, you know, I always love a good search. So you could see like, you know, there's just created, there's highlights, you can search for like a function. I can say like marketing, and then it'll give me all the topics. In marketing there. So we could just do more in marketing, actually. You can also, kind of newer if you've done Brain Deuce with us before, kind of newer now is you can sort by people. So if you see someone in particular, you can see like Michael filled out his whole profile, you know, he's got some suggested topics on what he wants to talk about there, etc., etc. So you can also sort by people. Ryan's dream raid date would be Jason Lemkin— the Jasons— Lemkin, Kalkanis, and Momoa. That's a pretty good—

I'll let both of them know.

Okay, would you please let Momoa know? I'll let Momoa know. Okay, um, last few questions on health and safety here. Can you quickly restate the at-home COVID test protocol? Yes, I can. So I will bring that slide back up and restate it. You sure, my son? I don't know why I keep closing my screen share. Sorry, guys. Yes, I will restate the at-home COVID testing protocol. You can do again any over-the-counter test, it's fine. Take it within— when you're within 72 hours of your first entrance to SAS or Annual, which only you will know what day you're going to come first. Take a photo of it with your ID next to it and the date and time. If you have an iPhone, your iPhone automatically adds the date and time to any photo. You probably just don't notice because you have to tap the photo to see it, but it has automatically added to all your photos. So if you've got an iPhone, just take a photo of your test result and your ID and you're good. Because then what you'll do once you show up is we'll just tap it and it'll say you took it Saturday at, you know, 11 AM because it automatically does that. If you don't have an iPhone, you know, take a picture next to your computer's clock time with the date and phone or date and time. That's the easiest way. Sorry to be—

Just so folks know, if you don't do it and you test on site, there's essentially— it's outdoors, it's nice, but there's a holding pen. So you'll get tested digitally. And there are a lot of people ask you, you just sit on your phone until your results come in. They'll call you, or I think they text you, right? They text you when you're done, right?

Yeah, I think it's digital now.

It was essentially a nice holding pen outdoors.

There's music.

Yeah, it's not bad, but, um, it's much better to bring your own test. But worst case, you'll be on your phone for 15 minutes while you're waiting for your results to come back.

Yeah, correct. So again, I don't— I— you'd be more comfortable just doing yourself, but it will be on site. There's like live TV.

Most folks though, last year, just because we did it, most folks last year definitely do it yourself. Like, it's silly not to, to go— to not bring it with you. But the folks that did do it, we didn't— we didn't get a lot of complaints. We didn't— folks, it— last year or in Barcelona this year, we didn't— people didn't say, hey, we're waiting 15 minutes for my test, was was the end of the world. It's not. There's a—

it's—

you just sit and chill, but, um, try to avoid it.

Yeah, try and avoid it. Um, what is the mask policy at the event? Good question. Um, it is on the user, so if you want to wear masks, um, we encourage it if you want to be even more comfortable, but we are all open airs and outdoors, um, so it's not mandatory, and it's not mandatory right now for the camp. Um, all good there. Last person says after swag looks great. Do SaaS or Bucks get added to your app? Um, that's a great idea. Right now they're really physical, so when you check in you'll get a physical SaaS or Bucks card to take with you to the swag store, um, to redeem them. And if you do any of those extra things to get extra SaaS or Bucks, again, they'll give you like a physical SaaS or Bucks that you then go redeem. Um, they are like credit card size, so you can stick in your wallet and don't lose it. Um, But yeah, you'll, you'll get a physical faster buck, if you will. Good idea on that. Alright, cool. We've made it to the top of the hour. I don't think there are any more questions. Thanks everyone for joining. We're super excited to celebrate 10 years of SaaStr. Yeah. It'll be great. It'll be great. So see you guys very soon, December 13th, 14th, 15th. Come early to get your badge.

Come early, dress comfy, but bring a sweatshirt. And do a lot of brain dates.

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Jason M. Lemkin, for joining. Thanks everyone for watching, and we'll see you soon.