SaaStr Annual Know Before You Go Webinar

cover today, um, before you guys come to SAMHSA. Very exciting time. So just make sure the live stream is going. Yep, it's going. Okay, sweet. So, um, cool. Let me share my slides with you guys. Share slides. Here it is. Awesome. And if you guys hear any like work lists, it's because I'm Faster loading in. Just ignore them. Fun. Okay, sweet. So thanks for joining our Know Before You Go webinar. We're super excited for you guys to be here next week. There's a lot going on. And so, yeah, super excited for you guys to be here very soon. So a quick overview and I'll make sure I'm recording. Yes, I'm recording. Great. Okay, awesome. You guys will be coming here next week. We are at the San Mateo County Event Center. The 13th through the 15th. There's early badge pickup on Monday the 12th if you want to come for that. Other than that, we'll see you guys very soon in less than a week. Super exciting stuff. There are multiple entrances to the venue, so just be aware. You can use either one as an attendee. 2495 is the kind of like default one that Uber uses, but Yeah, for some reason you want to get to a particular one, um, that is what most people, um, consider— I don't know, most of the sponsors go there. But, um, yeah, and then there's the Saratoga entrance. So, um, if you guys need help between now and coming to show, um, you can reach out to events@saspring.com, or just starting on Monday, you can come here physically, um, come to help desk. Sometimes it's honestly easier and faster just to come in person, um, as we start to move from being on the computers and emails to Irl. So just a fun tidbit there. We are an indoor-outdoor event if you didn't know, and it is a 40-acre-plus campus, so recommend wearing comfortable shoes, wear layers so you're not too cold if you're walking between halls and sessions and stuff like that. Some stuff is outside, some sessions are outside, so yeah, just wear layers if you're traveling in because it can get just kind of chilly out there sometimes. If you're coming to SASRA and you, you, I think rideshare is like the number one way our attendees get here. But if you're not using that, you can request parking if you're local or if you're renting a car because it's just easier. There is a parking request form on our attendee portal. So you would just go into our attendee portal here, scroll down, and then request parking for the days that you would want parking. You would just say you are a general attendee. And then which days you need parking. Most people will need parking all 3 days. So that's parking. If you happen to be staying at the Hampton Inn, you can take the Saster shuttle. So that will be running on a loop from the Hampton Inn to the Saster Annual Campus all days during these times here. Great way to use it if you are staying at the Hampton Inn, it's a good option to use there. Registration entrances, like we said, there are two entrances on campus for registration and badge pickup, as well as our satellite registration over at the Hampton Inn, which we'll show the hours in a second. Again, you can come to either one. This is kind of the breakdown of where folks go. So Cloud One being our main entrance, you can go here, you can type in this address into your rideshare if you wanna make sure they take you to the main address. Otherwise, use either entrance where your rideshare will drop you off. Badge pickup times. So important here, if you are coming in early, we do recommend coming to get your badge early so you can utilize the express lanes that we have on site. The first time you check in, obviously, just takes a little bit longer, much like an airport. So if you're around Monday, you can come pick up your badge either here at the San Mateo County Event Center or at the Hampton Inn. In San Mateo. So if you're like, I'm just getting in Monday and I'm staying at the Hampton Inn, I wanna just get my badge and like rest, you can do that there. You don't have to come to campus on Tuesday. If you want to get your badge early before SaaStray Annual opens at 1, you can do so at the Hampton Inn satellite registration. They're gonna be open from 10 to 4. Starting at 1 PM, our registration will be open here as well as the event. So yeah, if you're, you're coming in early, you wanna get your badge before you show up, you can also go to the Hampton Inn on Tuesday morning and get your badge there. Wednesday, if you are coming in later to get your badge, we open early at 8:00, and same thing on Thursday to come get your badge. What do you need to get your badge? So you will need a valid photo ID. So this is either like your license or your passport. And then we do recommend downloading the SASTR Who Do You Wanna Meet app. It has a check-in code on it, so it's very handy for that. You can just download the app, log in, and it'll give you what's called the check-in QR code. You can just scan that when you get here. It will pull up your ticket directly. It makes checking in really fast. Just to note, much like all major venues, we do have security checks in place at all times at Faster Annual. So you need to make sure you don't bring anything that is— could be deemed inappropriate to bring into a live event with thousands of other people. Treat it like a sporting event or a concert, like don't bring things you wouldn't bring there. You obviously might bring your laptop though, which you wouldn't bring there. So if you do bring laptops, etc., just know we do security checks each time you go in and out of SASFR, very similar to an airport. You can use a clear bag if you want, makes it a little bit easier. But just note there's obviously any prohibited items will be prohibited. Compensated. So just try and pack appropriately for what you need for the day. Maybe just like laptop power. I don't know. There's like water stations here, all that jazz. I will say, unlike an airport, they're not going to ask you to like dump your Starbucks if you bring a Starbucks or water. So that part is okay. But yeah, other, all the other airport rules apply. And just a pro tip, we just remind our sponsors, if you are traveling from the US, to SFO. You will need your REAL ID if it's your driver's license. That is now in place, so starting this week, you will need your REAL ID if you're just using your license, or you need your passport. So that's just a pro tip for getting on the plane to come to SASTR. Okay, we have a 40-acre campus. It's less confusing once you get here, trust me. It is quite big. It is indoor/outdoor, so yeah, wear comfortable shoes. These will help guide you through— these clouds will help you, help you get to the different places you need to go. Um, but basically Hangar West and Hangar East is where you'll spend the most of your time. That's where most of our stages are. Who Do You Want to Meet meetings, the Brain Date, um, smaller workshops are there. The bigger Brain Date workshops are out in the park and networking. Sassafras Square Park, if you're like I am meeting somebody on site, where should I meet them? Um, that and the beer garden are really great outdoor places to meet people. The coworking space over here is not like the best place to meet people. It actually is— it functions as a coworking space of like, go plug in, like do some work there. You'll notice it's fairly close to a stage, so like not a great place if you need to go take a Zoom. I would recommend Sash Square Park or the beer garden. There's plenty of just like outdoor seating here that is quieter just because those, those hangars can get quite loud. So if you're like, I already know I need to take a Zoom during the event, where should I go? I would recommend those too. There's Wi-Fi campus-wide. You can get on it and then, yeah, do your, do your work from there. So yeah, it is interactive. There's a lot of different things. There's a lot of different like spaces you can take advantage of too. So if you're a founder, you can use the Founders Lounge. If you're an investor, you can use the VC Lounge. There's a speakeasy lounge that's open to everyone. There's also a hidden barcade on campus, somewhere on campus. A hidden bar. So if you can find it, kudos to you. There's some fun things in there. So there's also gonna be some other fun surprises that I won't ruin. So yeah, there's a lot of other fun things on campus. I know most of you guys are here for content networking and like talking to sponsors, but there's a lot of fun stuff on campus. This is even a version of our 2 hangers because it has all the sponsors on it. So If you're looking for a particular sponsor, these are the maps to use. Again, they're in our main two hangars. There's a lot of really great sessions on the agenda this year. We have so many great leaders coming from like the leading AI companies and go-to-market companies in SaaS. Very exciting. These are some of like the top sessions so far. And then I also highlighted just a few things per day. So on Tuesday, we open at 1:00. That's the time to know. Um, for coming to SaaStr, we have a Founder CEO Mixer. You can register with us directly in the, on saastrangel.com or in the app. Um, you can join the Founder CEO Mixer if you're a founder or CEO. This is gonna be in the Founder's Lounge, um, with Rome. So that'll be fun. Just like a little get to know you with other founders and CEOs before content starts. Um, and then we have content starting at 3. So some really great sessions starting at 3. Another one I think that just got added. And then if you are a CEO, we do also have a CEO CFO mixer in the afternoon before happy hour. So that's Tuesday, Wednesday. We do start bright and early, so make sure you guys are here for these 9:30 sessions. There are two really good ones in the morning. There's Rubrik, there's Service Titan. I've been on the prep calls for both of those. They're both gonna be really good. If you, if you're like, how am I supposed to choose one or the other? We do also livestream, so you can just like choose which one you think you're gonna get the most value out of and then watch the other one later. It'll also be on the Saastr podcast. So yeah, you can pick one, or if you like show up and one of 'em's full, then go to the other one and then watch the other one. So, yeah, lots of really great content in the morning to kick off with. Then we go into Jason's like formal kickoff and into the interview with the CEO of HubSpot. Back to back with OpenAI and Perplexity. Those are both really good ones. We have a CCO mixer in the afternoon. Again, this is open. You can register for this on sasstraining.com or in the app. And then we've got poker night. So there's two portions of poker night. You can do the— if you are a CEO or CRO, you can apply for the high rollers version of poker. If you don't get in, don't be offended. You'll know you'll get in because you'll get a calendar invite directly from our team. If not, there is a general poker night that you can sign up for right on the app to play poker. It's just the way we do like the happy hour is poker night on Wednesday. So there is gonna be poker tables, dealers, all that jazz, but not real money. So just a tidbit there. Thursday, gotta be jam-packed. So I know some people think, you know, events lose energy on the third day. Ours is the opposite. We are starting off the morning with Jason's AI in Sales Kickoff in the morning at 9. We use Delphi for our, for some of our AI. The CEO is going to be coming and doing, it's a really fun, I've seen his slides, they're very fun. It's like he asked the AI to help him with the slides and asked them for like their hot takes on topics. And then he was also going to talk about how he built Delphi. So that one's pretty fun right after. You've got the BVP session with Anthropic and Cursor. So that's a good one. Right after that, you've got the Founder VC Brunch in the VC Lounge. Then after lunch, you've got Snowflake right into Box and IBM, and then right into our Mayfield and Zaster AI demo pitch finale, and then right into Jason's closing AMA and the wrap party. So yeah, we don't recommend leaving early. We recommend staying all the way through the wrap party. I know a lot of people who like have to, I don't know, be trying to travel or leave early. Like if you have to check out of your hotel, you can store your luggage here. There's coat check. And we recommend just using that and staying the whole day because yeah, there is a lot of really great content on Thursday to be had. So, um, another thing we've added that's newer for this year is we, we've done these Meet With sessions. So you guys will see these peppered into the app and the agenda. You can meet with some really great CEOs, founders, experts. These are sessions we recommend signing up for sooner rather than later. Um, we do that because some of these people will reach out to you directly to do like a one-on-one meeting. So we recommend signing up for these, these Meet With sessions or like VIP meet and greets pretty much. Super handy to get people to take something. They'll also be like at their booth during these times. So yeah, again, fun things to sign up for are these VIP meet and greets. We did them last year, worked pretty well. And like I said, if you sign up early, some of these folks will reach out to you to do like a one-on-one meeting, which would be even better. So yeah, definitely you'll see these in the app. Just go to saastrannual.com, click on agenda, or if you've got the Saastr Who Do You Want to Meet app, you can sign up there. But these are super handy. Other last things you can do before you get here. We have a really great program called Meet a VC. So if you are a founder who's coming, which is probably most of you on this call, you can register via the link. It's just meetavc.com. Super easy to remember. Go to Meet a VC, tell us about your startup that we can get this to the investors. This does not guarantee meetings with investors, but it does mean you'll at least get in front of them since we've been sending this out to investors actively pre-show. So on the flip side, if you are an investor, you can register as an investor for access to Meet a VC for qualifying investors. Okay, who do you want to meet? This is our core networking app for this year. A lot of you are already in here, but if you're not yet, we recommend downloading the SaaStr Who Do You Want to Meet app. It's brand new for 2025. It uses AI. It uses a lot of— for some of you who've realized it's Brella and maybe you've used Brella before, it's like a very on acid version, I call it, of Brella. So even if you've used it before, it is a slightly different version that is specialized just for SaaStr. It has its own app, so you're gonna wanna— so even if you've come before SaaStr, you're gonna wanna download this app because it's a new app. So download the SaaStr Who Do You Want to Meet app. The meetings are gonna be double opt-in, so I'll show you guys what I mean in a second. And just note, because this is new for this year, it's not open to vendors or those in sales or consultants or folks like that. It's really for CEOs, founders, revenue leaders. Those are the only people that the app is open for this year. We may change that in next iterations, but that's the format for this year, no matter what. And if you go into the app, the first time you join, you'll need a specific, a unique join code that is specific to you. So if you can't find it, you can reach out to events@saftrink.com. If you get here and you can't find it, go to the Who Do You Want to Meet lounge. They can help you get set up. Our, our team and the Brella team will be there fully staffed to make sure you can get into the app and then start doing meetings. But this is what it looks like on the desktop. It's very similar on mobile. This is the app you'll see here. Amelia, I'm the SVP. I didn't really write much here. I would write more than I did here on your profile the first time. On the mobile version, I'll call out this check-in QR code. It's very, very handy. So on the mobile version of SASTR, which I'm on here, this is the— I'm on dual devices here. If you hit the menu, you can go to your check-in QR code. The same QR code is going to populate here. And it's very handy because this is what you will use to check in to SASTR once you get here. So once you get here, if you use this, you can scan it with iPads and it'll automatically print your badge and ticket. You don't have to like find yourself in the system. Makes it a lot faster to check in. So make sure you have the app downloaded for that and for the networking. But your check-in QR code is there. So that part is fun. And then, yeah, it's on the homepage as you already saw. It's gonna suggest with its AI, like, who you should network with. So if I go into here, I'll see my matches. I see, you know, CROs, Jackie, who is actually one of our Super Braindate speakers, VPs of marketing, VPs of sales, different folks that it wants me— actually, I know Matt from a while ago. It is funny, like, I've seen people I know in here. I'm like, I don't know how it knows that I know these people, like I know Daniel. So yeah, it is funny. It's like, do you want to meet with people that you know? Which is quite funny. And then yeah, it'll give you— a lot of these people I don't know. There's just some that I do know, like these folks I don't know. Actually, I know Peter is a sponsor, SVP of Revenue. So yeah, you can see there's a lot of different people in this app that you can connect and meet with. If you do want to meet with someone, I'm just going to go back to the homepage because I'll do this on David who works at Zaster with me. You would hit the connect button and if you wanted to meet with David, you would say suggest meeting. You would say, why do you wanna meet? So this part is important. So it'll say, it'll suggest a time for you. That's cool. You can use the suggestion or you can change it. Like it's picking time, like if you built your session schedule on here, it will take that into consideration. So I do recommend like picking your sessions first on here. Um, so that it won't pick times that both of you are like in sessions. It'll pick a time both of you are free. So like we're both free Thursday at 10:20. Um, I would write more than this. I would say something like, um, you know, why do you want to meet with David? Like, what do you guys want to talk about? Is it about hiring? Is it about tactics? Um, because the more you write, the more likely it is that this person will accept your meeting. And that's really important on who do you want to meet. Because you are limited to 2 accepted meetings at the start. So again, super important you use this wisely. You can't spam people because it's limited to 2 meetings. It also means you need to go through and either accept or reject any requests you might have because then those people are waiting to meet with you. So I don't recommend just leaving them like in your pending meeting status, like either accept them or reject them. So that person like If you reject them, they'll get one of their meeting slots back to then ask somebody else to meet. So super important there. I would then send, you know, I'm just gonna send that now. And now you'll see I've sent this meeting request. And I can send a message, right? You can send one message as like a reminder, but again, if you feel like David is not gonna meet with you because he hasn't responded for a few days, you can cancel the meeting so that you can get one of your meeting requests back. To get a confirmed meeting. That's ultimately, you wanna have as many confirmed meetings as possible. And they don't open up until you have at least 2 confirmed and accepted. So they do have to be confirmed and accepted. They can't just be pending like, hey, I've sent too many requests, gimme 2 more requests. It's the number one, it's the number one question we get at eventsuccessrate.com. You do have to have your meetings confirmed to open up 2 more meetings. So that's how it works. You have to have them confirmed. So do recommend going through your matches and either clearing them out or accepting them, or like I just said, canceling them to try and get confirmed meetings with the other attendees. Okay, so that should hopefully explain who do you want to meet. Core of that is you can either do it on desktop or the app. Just download the SaaS or who do you want to meet app. That's the right one. Get in there. It's not too late to do this. Now is a good time. If you're like, this is the first time I'm hearing about this, this is a good time to do it. A lot of people still do it on site. So we're gonna have a whole Who Do You Wanna Meet lounge that you can go into. They'll also explain how the meetings work from there. But yeah, super recommend you do it early. There's already like a bunch of— there's more than like 1,000 people in there already. So highly recommend going into there now. The other way you can network is via our Brain Date workshops. This functions a little bit differently because it's group meetings. All the Who Do You Wanna Meet meetings are one-on-one meetings, which is an important distinction, and then all the Braindates are group workshops and they are topic-based. So it's a little bit different because when I'm in Who Do You Want to Meet, I'm doing it based on the person, whereas in Braindates, I'm doing it based on a topic we all want to meet about. So it could be something like SaaS and AI or marketing and AI. It's more on the topic and less on the person. So important thing to do there. Um, note that Braindates, again, they are small groups. So, um, 5 folks total. Um, we do recommend you do slides if you host a Braindate. Our team will be checking for this because we do— Brain Dates are meant to be group conversations. Sometimes if you don't have anything to talk about, Brain Dates won't last very long. So something to be curated there. We do explain a lot of this in our Code of Conduct. So the first time you log into Brain Dates, you will see this pop up. So I'm gonna click that link to go to Brain Dates. And you'll see this is the first screen you'll see. When you do post a new topic, do not make it related to your product or service. If you do, it will get rejected by our moderation team. They'll send you a nice little message that says, hey, this is too closely related to your product or service. Please reapply your topic. Now, some of you have gotten that message already and have gotten the note that you cannot talk about your product or service after trying like 3 or 4 times. There's no way to just post your topic for other attendees to see unless it gets approved. So I recommend making it a good one. There's not a— not a way you can hack the system to just put a product commercial up there. It's got to get approved by our moderation team. And so we recommend making this topic as good as you can. It should be something you are an expert about if you want to host a Brain Date. I will say most first-time attendees don't host their own Brain Dates, they just join a Brain Date. So if you're like, I don't want to do slides and I just want to like meet other people about, you know, topics, I can join different ones. So you can see here like the one from the Firefly CEO on building a profitable AI company. I've seen this guy's slides, they're pretty fun. Like this is actually, I know a lot of people use Firefly, so you're like, This is a pretty fun one. If you're like, I don't wanna do the work of these slides, or like, I wanna go to this workshop, I would just book a spot here in the Brain Date session and that would get added to my schedule. And I'm actually gonna leave 'cause then otherwise I'm gonna take up a spot. So I'm gonna leave there. So now I've left, I don't wanna take up a spot there. But yeah, there's different Brain Dates already in here in the marketplace. These will also give you a good idea of— some of the ones are full. You can see, like, you can see which ones have gotten more popular. If you're like, okay, what should I, you know, try and write about? I would say most people talk about AI right now, but don't do that unless you actually want to talk about it. You don't have to talk about it. It's just something that most people do. So that's brain dates. Again, who do you want to meet is more person peer-to-peer based. Those are all one-on-one meetings, whereas brain dates is more topic-based, and these are all small group meetings. There's some best practices here, but basically don't sign up to host the— the TL;DR is don't sign up to host a brain date unless you want to put in the iteration to lead the group conversation in a meaningful way that's not related to your product or service. 'Cause these other 5 people will sign up for your Brain Date and be expecting you to be their host for the next 20 minutes and be an expert on this topic. And you don't wanna feel awkward if you get there and you're like, I'm not sure what to say to these other 5 people. And now we have to try and make the most of our time and not feel like it was a waste of time. So that is, that is Brain Dates at a gist. Okay. A few last but certainly not least things. We do have these Summits. They are, um, gated access summits, so you do need to sign up for them. Um, if you fall into one of these categories, I recommend signing up on the website. That's the easiest way before we, um, close the applications. Um, so there is a CRO and CEO Poker Night. So if you're a CEO or CRO, sign up for that, um, high roller version of Poker Night. Um, there's a CMO Summit. So this could be a CMO or VP of Marketing at least at $10 million and above. So you do have to have a certain revenue threshold. To get into CMO Summit. Same thing with CFO, that's CFOs or VP of Finance, $10 million and up. And then same thing with the CCO Summit, it's CCOs or VPs of CS at $10 million and up. Um, if you haven't gotten into these yet, again, you can apply here. If you— there's two ways to know whether or not you were accepted or not. One way is you'll get calendar invite directly from our team. That ensures you were accepted into the program. You also will get a secondary ticket And it will say one of these, like CMO Summit, it'll say Poker Night. Again, it's just an easy way for us to keep a list. So you'll see that there, that it doesn't really do anything, it doesn't function, but it's just for tracking purposes. So that's how you'll know you get in, one of those two ways, calendar invites or per ticket. If you got one but not the other, I wouldn't worry about it because one is naturally tied to the other. And, but you do need to be invited to apply and qualify. So if you do apply and you're like, I was a CEO, but I wasn't accepted. And maybe because the revenues that your revenue stage is not at the level for these summits that are more at an at-scale level. So just keep that in mind for summits. But there's plenty of content outside of the summit each day. All those sessions I just mentioned earlier are not— those are just regular sessions. Those are not summit sessions for the day. Other than that, there's a lot of really great things to do. I would say pace yourself. SAS Radio goes by fairly quickly. If you need any help, a lot of this is in our attendee portal. This replay is live streaming, so it's already on our SAS Radio YouTube channel if you want to go back to it or share any of it with your team. But yeah, we recommend using our attendee portal here or just coming to see us on site. So we'll see you— we're already here, but we'll see you guys starting on Monday. You can help— we can help answer any questions. So from there, we'll see you guys. There'll be lots of really great coffee. Again, lots of fun surprises, a lot of really great content and sessions and folks to meet with. We're super excited for you guys to be here. And we will see you there.