SaaStr Insider Webinar: 2024 Events Preview and Look Ahead

New York, David?

It's good. A little cold, but sunny.

Uh, you know, busy. It's like crowded.

Oh yeah, it's packed.

Yeah, it's packed. It's packed.

It's all good though. How's the— how's California? Sunny?

No, it's— yeah, it's actually— it's not bad. I was just thinking this morning, it's actually not too bad for, uh, for being December and for being, uh, almost Christmas. It's not that bad. Very nice. Yeah, can't complain. I don't think it's as cold as it is where you are, so no problem. No problem. Okay, so the topic for today's webinar, thanks for everyone who's joining on like the livestream or watching this later. I know a lot of folks do watch on the livestream, so thanks for tuning in there. We'll probably do one more of these next week before we break for the holidays. But for today, if you're new here or new to watching one of these, we do these every Thursday at 9 Pacific. They're our SAS Data Insider webinar. They're really just like a behind the scenes, if you will, for SaaStr partners and just super fans. So really the lens is on partnerships and how to get, you know, maybe more leads or more traction or that kind of stuff within the SaaStr community and how to access it, which is something a lot of people always ask us about. And so since it's almost the end of the year, we thought we would just do a quick preview of our 2024 schedule of events and maybe we'll just share a few stories and spitball a few things that have worked well at these events this year. With the lens of going into next year's schedule. And I know we did do 3 global events this year. We're doing just 2 next year, which we'll talk about. And then we are actually adding back digital events to our mix. So yeah, a lot of exciting time at SAS for— it's been busy. I'm sure it's been busy for a lot of you as well. But yeah, we have not pumped the brakes in December. So lots going on. We'll try and keep it short and sweet. So yeah, so going forward to our two major events. So we are gonna have South Europa again next year. This will be the 5th South Europa, fun fact. So that's super exciting. It's the second time it's in London and it's back at the Tobacco Docks. So that'll be really fun if you've never been to South Europa. We moved it to London a few years ago just to make it more central, but it does typically move around. It's kind of like a traveling show. Who knows where we'll be in 2025. For 2024, we're going back to the London and Tobacco Docks because we had space to grow there. So we're going to try and smash it out of the park and fill it out for this year. SAS TR Annual, excitingly in 2024, will be celebrating its 10th SAS TR Annual. If you want, a couple of years ago we celebrated 10 years of just SAS as a whole, but this is actually the 10th annual, which I think is super exciting. And it's, you know, it's one of those things where I feel like once you get to 10, then imagine it's really there. So going along in, um, fast. Yeah, that'll be fun. That'll be in September.

Yeah, 2 anniversaries, right? 5th year in Europe, 10 years in US. Pretty cool.

Yeah, pretty cool. It's an exciting, exciting time. And then we're also doing Demo Day. So yeah, that's— is that where I started? Yeah, that's where I started. Me— oh, you know what I did? I went chronological. I was like, what? So yeah, maybe I'll just go back one slide real quick and then we'll get into our 2024 schedule of events. Um, so yeah, we This year, for those who might remember, we did, um, SaturOpa, Inbound, and at the Tobacco Docks almost on the same day. We did Saafr Annual, um, it's September, it was the week before, which I know it was kind of hard for some folks because it was the same week as HubSpot's Inbound. So next year they are on different weeks and a different weekend for us. So everyone's all spread out nicely. Um, but yeah, so then we also did APAC this year, which was a really fun community event for Asia Pacific. We hope to get back there in 2025. It was just like a lot of manpower for what it was. And also when we kind of looked at the metrics, a lot of these folks also came to just annual in Europa. So we're going to try and focus our energies into making those a little bit bigger and better rather than having APAC next year. So if you guys are wondering about if we're going back to Singapore, we're taking a little, a short break, but we will for sure. I personally want to get back there, so I'm sure we'll be back hopefully in '25 or so. But again, much like Europa, Saastrøe APAC will probably also be one of those shows where we travel. It's a traveling circus and we move in cities, so it may be anywhere in APAC in 2025. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of suggestions for cities. But yeah, so that may be back there. And then yeah, well, Europe we'll talk about in a bit. It's the 5th one and then annual is the 10th one. So yeah, that's super exciting milestones. But yeah, we'll go in chronological order of what is coming down the pipeline just for Saastrøe's events in 2024. So first and foremost, we're having Demo Day. We talked about this a lot last week. So if you want the full spiel, you could check out the recording or just ask one of us if you can do the high level. We'll do a little high level now, but we went into further details last week on Demo Day. So as you guys might remember, if you've been around SAS for a bit, we started doing digital events in 2020. I wonder why. But we did them exclusively for a while because we couldn't do in-person. And then we did both and then we kind of have tailored off on the digital events and gone, you know, just full bore on, you know, we, as I said, we did 3 big in-person events this year. That's a lot of time and energy. We're a small team at FastR internally. But then we were kind of looking at the numbers again and the metrics. We look at the metrics all the time. And a lot of our sponsors too, I will say, were asking for like, you know, are you guys doing scale? Are you doing some sort of digital event? Like, what are you guys doing that maybe I can access that is earlier in the year because Europe is great, but it's in the summer, and Annual is great, but it's not till fall, right? So what can I do with SaaStr in the meantime? And there's two things, right? There's our media, which we'll talk about at the end, because that's evergreen. And then there's Demo Day. So kind of out of this want for folks, and also a lot of folks, so something Waylon said last week, like a lot of folks want to showcase their actual product, right? A lot of SaaStr content, as you guys know, is all like actionable, tactical. But there is also a point in time in which we do need to see things that are out there, get a sense of what's new, what can maybe help you hit your goals. And so that's how Demo Day was born. It's like a SaaS-er take on the classic of, you know, usually folks just do Demo Day at like YC of demoing their different products. That's a little different because these folks are established. They're not, you know, maybe they are raising funding, but that's not the point. The point is to showcase your product to the SaaS community in a way that can help them this next year. Hit their goals. Yeah, David, what do you think about Demo Day?

I know it's new.

I mean, you've been, you've been, you've been chatting about it more than I have.

Yeah, no, something you mentioned actually is I've been hearing a lot from folks, which is kind of a lull in Q1, not a lot of events happening. And it's a really good opportunity to, one, keep that momentum going with the SaaStr community, but two, a good opportunity to generate leads in Q1. A couple of folks in demand gen have gaps in that, in the schedule around that time. And this is able to meet that need as well. So it's just a timing of it looks to be good. So we'll see.

Yeah, no, it's great. So if you're unfamiliar with our digital event, Demo Day, we've decided will be Tuesday, January 30th. So it is the end of, you know, for some folks it's the end of Q4. So if you're looking for a quick way to get some leads because you're a little short, Demo Day is for you, my friends. But also if it's, you know, if you're more, you know, for some folks that are on more of the calendar year, if it's your Q1 and you need a quick way to start the year strong, then Demo Day is a good way to do that. So how we've done our digital events is we do them as what we call digital mega events. The twist on Demo Day is that, you know, we want your founders demoing other founders in the community or really a member of your exec team. And, you know, the lens being that this is to, again, help folks scale in the new year and what's new or what's cool that you've come out with, maybe an AI integration or something else that you want to showcase to the SaaS community that you think could help them, you know, meet their goals. Because I think that's— a lot of folks are heads down trying to figure that out. And so I think that will continue into 2024. Something else I think that David said that reminded me of this is like, based on that timing, right, in Q4, maybe it's your Q1, this is fairly turnkey, right? I think that's something too that we get a lot of feedback on, like usually between our speakers team, who I love, and even our sponsorship team and David and myself, like we're very stringent on how we have folks do content at SaaS. We have a very high bar. People tell us all the time, maybe too high of a bar, but we have an extremely high bar. We only do original content at, you know, Europa or Annual. It has to be brand new. It can't be presented elsewhere. And so it's work, right? Like you've got to get your And it's usually the exec team as well. So it's usually the exec team, like, thinking of a topic, doing a whole slide deck. It's original content. Like, we kind of force people to be content creators at our events. And I think what's nice about Demo Day is it's a demo. So, like, it's fairly easy, right? You could do slides if you need to do slides. You could do a live demo if you want to just do it live. You could do a mix. But usually this is something you already know how to do. And so the prep time, it's fairly minimal, right? It's just pick an exec who has the time to show off what's new. If it's your CPO or your CEO or whoever it is that's, you know, kind of leading the charge on your exec team for this. And it could be a new product or a new feature, or it could just be like things within your product that you wanna demo. Again, help people in the new year to make the most out of it. So again, the idea here too is that it's fairly turnkey. It's not at that higher level of like content creator that we usually do. And it's meant to be a little bit easier so you can show folks, you know, within 15 minutes, something cool that will help them, that will get them like riled up.

Easy peasy.

Easy peasy. Yeah, it's turnkey. So it's, you know, one of the easiest things to do this after next year. As always, you know, we kind of expect our mix of our balanced audience here, even at our digital events. If you haven't been to one before, we do still get a very similar audience to our in-person events and pretty much a widespread of our Saastr.com readers who are CEOs, CROs, revenue leaders and investors. And then as we, as you guys maybe come to this webinar or Workshop Wednesday, very similarly, we do it all live, as you know. And then we boost it on, on all of our social networks. So a lot of folks do watch on the live stream and then, you know, read about it when we do the write-ups and everything else. So if you are interested, do let us know. You know, Demo Day is already live on the website. We're going to go live speakers right after the holiday. So yeah, good time to get in early. Usually there is a, there's a your time to lead value here if you do wanna sponsor. But again, it's super turnkey. You'll probably get, you know, a couple hundred leads from it. So if you wanna just start the year strong, Demo Day is pretty easy. So just let David here know if you wanna do Demo Day. So I'll go to the next one 'cause we hit a lot of this last week. But again, if you guys have any questions on Demo Day, let us know or watch the recording from last week. And then yeah, next in the year really is, SaaStr Europa is our next big in-person event. So yeah, a little bit on SaaStr Europa if you guys don't know the history, it's the 5th edition. So the first few years we were in Paris, it was really— it started when I actually kind of started. So it was— it started in like a small hotel in Paris. It was just like, you know, let's just see who comes to this because most folks just come to the annual. It was really just like a— we did in the summer because it was meant to be like a bridge the gap between annuals, which at the time were in February. So it was like just a— it was really a meet-up on acid in the early years, but then it actually grew into its own thing. So a lot of people do ask us like, what are the maybe some similarities or differences between the Europa event and the annual? I would say from my perspective, and I'll let David give his, like, I think Europa's kind of different because one, like, it's, it's a little bit smaller, right? Because it's only, it's in its 5th year, so it is gonna be a bit smaller than the annual. Some people actually kind of like that as sponsors because you can talk to, or as attendees, because you can pretty much talk to everyone. It is, it is amazing how many people come to Saastrano, but you do have to be kind of more methodical about who you, who you're talking to and where you're spending your time because you, even though it's, and it's one more day, right? So you get 3 days, so you get more people, but it's a lot of folks and a lot of stimulation, a lot of investors, a lot, a lot of content. And I feel like Europa is the right mix of both content and networking, which is like networking is more of a focus, I would say, in Europa, oddly. And so it's always been a big, like, heavy focus on Brand Days, how we do them, Meetup BC, how we do it, just the different networking things that we do. And so that's for me one of the big differentiators. And like I mentioned, we do move cities. So started in Paris, then we went to Barcelona for a year in 2022, which was super nice on the water. Definitely a vibe. And then yeah, we went to London because a lot of folks were like, oh, you know, we're coming from London. Can you move it closer? So yeah, we moved to London, which actually opened up more variety of speakers too, right? Because a lot of folks have offices in London. And I would say the last differentiator for me, and then I'll let David speak to what he usually talks about as differentiators or maybe similarities. It's like Europa, I think, you know, the speaker team and myself and Jason look at those very closely every year for Europa. We try and make sure we're not just doing And we did this for APAC too. We try and make sure we're not just doing content that is Europe-specific. So the unique thing about SaaStr Europa is just because it's in the UK, which I know some people are like, why do you still call it the UK with Brexit? I get it. I'm just gonna, for the sake of this, we're calling it SaaStr Europa and including, you know, London and the UK and everyone in the EU. But yeah, I would say the big difference is like, you know, we don't do that style of content, which I feel like is very much seen in our like attendee NPS and feedback is like all of our content and all of our speakers are folks that are coming usually from the States. Like 90% of people actually come from the States. It's nice that we do it in London because they can go visit their London offices. They can do a speaking engagement and then leave. Like, you know, Loom came this year. I'm like, Loom doesn't really go to— well, now they've been acquired, but like, you know, Loom historically, they, they have a big market there, but that's not where Joe lives every day, right? Like, he was there to go visit Loom to do SaaS. And like, that is the caliber of speaker we're bringing in. You know, it's these, these, or Parker Conrad, you know, who's again, not based in Europe, but Röpfling is a great company. We try and bring that differentiator, right? Of like, these are big global international companies coming to speak. It's not just content of like how to break out of Europe. We're like, if you want that content, it exists in so many other places. We try and differentiate our content there, but I'll shut up now. So go ahead, David. What are your kind of like— yeah, either similarities or differences?

Yeah, first, I'll just— I mean, a couple of thoughts. One, I think it's good. I think what I've seen is when we repeat, when we go back to the same city for the second time or the same venue, it's really great. Like, you know—

That's true.

Part of it is like us figuring out the kinks, like at Tobacco Dock. And now we get to go back and we know all the kinks. So it's going to be great. You know, there's so many folks last year who wanted to make it to London, couldn't make it, didn't realize we're in London. Now it's like we have more of a presence there. And so I think that second time event is pretty magical. Like we know where the foot traffic's gonna be. We know how to optimize best for sponsors and for attendees and just best experience all around. So I do think there's some magic in going back to the same city and same venue. For that second year. So that should be really special. When people ask me about Europa and the events there, I often say that, you know, what's the biggest difference? I often say it's the same profile attendee, same caliber, but they're Europeans. That's probably the biggest difference from an attendee standpoint. And I think actually I haven't thought much about it, but I think reflecting on what you said, Emilia, is really important in that this is not like an event about London or the UK market.

Yeah.

This is a global event. This is a global event where we have folks coming from many countries. I can't remember, but it was like dozens of countries, folks coming in from all over the world, from Asia, from Africa, from America, from India, all coming into London or in prior years Barcelona or Paris for our Ancestry Europe event. So it really is a global event. Very similar to Annual, but again, from like a sponsor perspective, you're going to be hitting all the European companies and European founders and European tech scene. So it's pretty cool and it's definitely not just London, right? I mean, not just UK companies, again, all over and all over Europe. So those are a couple quick thoughts.

No, I think those are great. And I think too, just the last thing you said, like it is very international, right? I think it's for this year, Europa. Um, it was like the number one country. I think it was like the— what, London? You know, the UK. And then— yeah, it was the same in Spain, right?

In Spain, I think UK was number one too.

But, uh, yeah, UK was number one too. That's why we moved in. We were like, well, if you all came here— um, but I think the US has always been at least third or fourth. So, you know, there is a fair amount of buyers that are like international buyers that are going to the show. So that is again big differentiator to keep in mind. A lot of folks are European, but you are going to get those international companies, right? Like the Looms and the Ripplings that like operate globally, that have offices there and have offices in the States. And that's why within London, right, it's very purposeful to, to hit that key demographic. So, yep, that's Europa. Yeah, maybe I'll just flip through and see if there's anything else we want to say on Europa. I do agree with David, you know, it's, it's something I don't talk about a lot, but It is true, like now that we are repeating, you know, venues that it's something where we knew where the foot traffic was this year, that's the leverage we use like every year at Annual. Now that we've done it at the San Mateo County Event Center a couple years, but that'll be a nice, you know, kind of leg up for sponsors and partners this year as we will literally make some improvements year over year based on how it went this year. So we actually have, you know, some of the data to show where folks gravitated to in traffic and can adjust accordingly to try and maximize the amount of foot traffic. That goes to our sponsors. So yeah, again, we've kind of talked about our audience. And then maybe just as a last here, this is what the, the gold booths look like at Europa this year. I think that they're changing a little bit for 2024 just to be a little bit more streamlined, which I think will be nice because some of the feedbacks, again, some of the feedback folks had this year was like trying to streamline some of the monitors and stuff like we do at Annual just to give folks a little bit more space to spread run out. But yeah, it's kind of a, basically a, a gold at Europa. Um, and then yeah, let's chat about annual before we run out of time. Let me just flip forward and then I'll reshare. Here we go. So SASTR annual, it's the 10th SASTR annual, um, which is super exciting. Again, I know maybe it's slightly confusing for folks who went a couple years ago and you're like, wasn't it just 10? But it was 10 years of SASTR. Um, and also I think that was 2021, so you know, a lot of folks were not fully back out traveling yet, so maybe you didn't see it and you're like, I don't know about this dual 10 thing, uh, and it's just us. But so for most of you, it'll feel— our, our 10th celebration will feel new. But yeah, it'll be the 10th. You know, I just realized, David, it's the 10th Thatchery Annual starting on September 10th.

Look at that, 10/10. Cool.

I didn't even realize. Yeah, yeah, 9/10. Um, so yeah, that's fun. Um, we're back at the San Mateo County Event Center. So what— listen, I'll just say one thing here. And then I'll let David chat about what, you know, you usually say to folks about Annual when you go out on market with it. It is the 10th year. It is exciting. SAPTRA Annual, unlike our other events like APAC might turn into or like Europa, has always been in the Bay Area. I do know there are a few other major events that are leaving, you know, basically the broader Bay Area. I know our partners at Google Cloud are moving next to Vegas, right? I know there was some in the air about Dreamforce coming back to SF, so they're coming back for '24, but you know, who knows after that. But yeah, the annual's always been in San Francisco, so we're in, you know, we're the SF Bay Area, if you will, the broader Bay Area. We have moved venues within the Bay Area, but it's always been in Silicon Valley, which I think is something just still super important to keep note, right? Maybe no matter what you guys read or see on, Twitter or wherever, or X or whatever, right? I feel like the last few times I've gone to the Bay Area, the Palo Alto was plenty busy where OpenAI is, and my city is plenty busy. I forget the neighborhood name. It's pretty busy there. So yeah, there is still a lot of— and you do run into people, right? This is something I can't explain. It's like anytime I go to the area, I'm like, we are constantly running into folks that are in SaaS and cloud. You know, I've I'm not going to name speakers, but we have literally seen speakers like Al Tadir and we've like, you know, said, like, you just don't see that caliber of like high-level CEO out in, you know, in LA, or sometimes in New York you do, but I, I feel like it's more highly concentrated in the Bay Area. And so we are staying in the Bay Area for 2024. Um, it's the 10th one and it's the 10th one in the Bay Area. So yeah, it's, uh, pretty magical. We've been at the San Mateo County Event Center now since 2021. And we looked at it previous to everything that happened in the world, and then, you know, once we decided we could kind of incorporate some festival-style elements, that's where we moved there. So, and it actually is a little bit easier to get to than, um, like a Moscone, if you're more familiar with that. You know, Moscone, you got to go into the city, and then it's a bit congested actually, whereas, um, what we like about the San Mateo County Event Center— not that there's no traffic to get there, um— it is a bit more spaced out. We have 40 acres, right? Spread out. People can ride short, people can park, people can Uber, whatever they need to do to get there. It's a little bit easier than maybe trying to like jump out of the car and like run down the sidewalk when you're at Moscone. Yeah, just one other thing.

Yeah, it feels like we're on like a campus in a way. And so, um, you know, when people come, they come for the whole experience, right? They're, they're there all day. Um, they don't— there's nowhere to go and like go down to a Starbucks for a meeting or jump to an office. Yeah, yeah, you're, you're there. And so you're there, you're kind of all in. And then we we have great like stuff there. We have, there's good coffee, there's good food, there's entertainment, there's lots of, and great networking. And so, you know, that's just part of the experience is coming for this, you know, sort of on-campus experience.

Yeah, and I would say that's the best way to do it. I know some, there are some folks who do it more Dreamforce style, but the majority of folks, to David's point, are coming for that campus style atmosphere. It's like, I'm going to stay at the shuttle hotel and I'm just going to ride the shuttle to Saastra for 3 days. And like, this is what I'm doing. Like, I'm just going to be there. We, you know, we architected it so people have places to work throughout the day. Food, you know, there's plenty of food, coffee, etc., water so that folks can just chill, work. A lot of people now use it as either offsites or as meetups or they host their own like smaller events within an event. So yeah, Saastra Annual has kind of become its own thing. Um, but yeah, it'll be exciting that it's 10 years because obviously we'll do some special things for celebrating its, its, uh, 10th edition of, um, SaaStr Annual. So yeah, um, SaaStr Annual is, if there was any doubt, is our original and flagship event. So that's why it's made it to 10 editions. And you know, Europa, Europa would be at 6, but you know, with everything in the world, we're at 5, um, just because Europe was a little bit slower to reopen. But yeah, so it's, they've both been kind of like longstanding events, but Annual's just been the original, as we call it. And the whole idea was, you know, as we were mentioning earlier on, like content and like why people come, it's the kind of original meetup for coming to learn about, you know, all SaaS, all tactical, no kind of, no fluff, as we say, all SaaS, no fluff style content. I know a lot of people still to this day, you know, bring their laptops, they bring notebooks, they are literally sitting in sessions, they're going to do the networking. Like I get that folks are like, oh, I could just watch the sessions after, but then you don't, right? It's like, you don't, it's not the same as if you're there and you're live. It's like basically learning in person. So it's a lot, you know, it has more of a presence in your brain. And then obviously there's the whole networking component, right? You're out and about. It's, that's why like to my point, like a lot of people now come in teams too, which I think is important to, to note on annual, right? We saw this year even more like CROs, CTOs, basically all the buyers are starting to come with their broader team because folks are using it as like a team meeting, right? If you're, whether you're, whether you have an office or not, I think a lot of folks use this time because it's in the Bay Area to try and, you know, do customer meetings on site, meet with each other on site. It's just a good touchpoint to basically be in office, but at SaaSphere. So it's, it's how people kind of use the show now and what it's evolved into. But I think it's a great use case because it just means that, you know, If you're thinking about sponsoring, it means that more of those, more of those folks on the BI committee are now coming because they are using it in this way, which I think is great for folks. And then, you know, because it'll be the sub-1, we're gonna do, you know, high-caliber speakers like we do every year, even more networking. To David's point, because we've been in this venue a couple times and we've tried to reiterate and improve the sponsor hall every year, it'll be even better next year. And yet we've added some fun, like, sponsor activations and activities that you probably just won't see at other SaaS events for sure. You might see them at like Coachella. I don't know anywhere else that had this year we had like a zipline and like a SaaS casino. And I don't know of any other SaaS-specific shows that also had that, but then also like, you know, tons of networking and people to meet and high-caliber attendees. So yeah, it's the annual is pretty magical. Pretty magical. So yeah, I think the last— maybe a differentiator or two here for annual, and then we'll wrap on media— is I think, again, unlike other things, our SaaS audience is more higher caliber. We've seen more of the buyer committee come to annual. So they are 52%. So more than half, just remember this, more than half of people that come to annual are VP level and above. So for us, I know we've been saying this a lot on our webinars. I'm going to keep saying it until September. I don't think it's a bad thing for your exec team to come to the show and do booth duty, right? You don't have to call it booth duty. You can say, hey, come do meetings. You can, you know, be a little bit more sensitive to their time. But honestly, we saw more CEOs, more exec teams doing booth duty or spending time in the booth, as you will, this year. And it really pays off, you know. A lot of those folks like instantly renewed because they were like, yeah, like I think it was like Zeni had like their CEO just chatting to folks in the booth. They like instantly renewed because they were like, yeah, we just closed a bunch of deals on site because our exec's here. Like it just is faster, right? Like if this is the, is, if this is the caliber of people that you're looking to meet and you have, you're already investing so much in faster, like if you can invest in your exec time, it does usually pay dividends. I would say this year it paid dividends for a lot of folks that We're able to pull this off next year. I think it will work even better. 'Cause again, it's just 'cause you're getting so many buyers, like it just speeds up the process a lot more and it shows like that kind of, and you know, you don't have to be like, oh, explaining to your exec like this is what we did faster. Like here's the value in it. Like they could see it firsthand. It just speeds up a lot of that process. So having your exec team there is highly recommended. I know I keep saying it, I'm gonna keep saying it.

It's a great insight. I definitely saw it and I was always impressed by it. But seeing— I also think it's just inspiring to the team. You know, when you see— I saw some pretty big companies that were sponsors where they had C-level at the booth on the front lines and just, just, you know, I think it says a lot about the business. And, you know, because there's so many founders and C-level attendees, it's always great to match, right? It's always great to like have a C-level talk to C-level.

Yeah.

And so that's, yeah, great, great insight, Amelia.

No, like I remember seeing Goddard from G2 like registering and I was like, oh, hey man, like how's it going? Like, can I help you get anywhere next? And he's like, I wanna go to our booth. Like, it was like literally number one. He was like, I'm going to the booth. He's like, where's our booth? Like, I wanna go there first. He's like, I wanna chat with the team. I wanna talk to people. Like, and he was there for, you know, hours, like if not the whole day. Like, so yeah, it is, you know, it is, and it was appreciated by the team. They were like, oh, that's so cool. So great, you know, it's to David's point, it's great for the team to see folks there. You know, attendees love it when you're there. It's just, again, it's a little bit more magical and special when you can have maybe, maybe your CEO can't come, but again, a C-level member or a member of your exec team is really fun. If you have anything fun to do with them, like if you have like people have done like book signings or something like that, or even just photos or something. If you have a mascot, bring your mascot, like do photos with your mascot. I think G2 brought theirs like 2 years ago and like did photos with them, Coddard and their mascot, which is super fun. So, so yeah, you know, people, people do like those kinds of things. They still, they still matter. They still matter. Okay, so since we were going chronologically, let me just flip through here on the back end and I'll reshare our last thing. So annual's in September, Europa's in June, Demo Day is going to kick off the year. And then last but not least, if I can get my screen share, here we go. Something we do evergreen in addition to saster.com is the media. So the media actually piggybacks off of saster.com, which is where most folks know us from, I would say, is saster.com and/or Jason's LinkedIn or Twitter. This is how you can capitalize on this. So a lot of folks do ask us sometimes too, like, you know, how do I more specifically get into Jason's audience? Or how do I get into, you know, the Saster community around? Again, I said this last week, but I can't tell you how many times somebody either emails me because my name is on all the marketing emails that goes out of, hey, I just saw this ad, how can I get one like this? Or hey, I just saw this, how can I, how can I do this too? Like, people see it. It is top of mind for a lot of folks. And again, unlike the events, which are super high ROI, These are highly turnkey, right? These are either a script or an ad and a landing page, super turnkey. You know, you, there is such a high value to in-person, but there's also a big value to having things like media that are more turnkey that you can turn on basically anytime, right? So if you have something you want to announce, if you need extra leads, if you want to drive traffic to an ebook, if you need more, you know, top of funnel, middle funnel, whatever it is, you wanna drive people to a demo page. Again, whatever it is, like the media is the best way to do that. And we do have different options within media. So we're always, we're usually nowadays like consulting with folks of like which of our media assets would work best for them. But it is great because it is year round, right? So on sastr.com, that powers the newsletters. So we have a couple newsletters, which I think is on, The next slide. There's a weekly that goes out every Sunday. So this has gone out every Sunday since the start of SAFTR. There's the daily, which started a couple years in and it actually goes out every other day. This is like the top news. A lot of folks actually love the daily, even though I always say like the weekly is like our highest caliber folks that are reading it. You know, it's kind of like the Sunday paper because it goes out on Sunday. Like people are reading it once a week. Yeah, it's like the Sunday paper, but fast. The Daily is more like latest breaking news, top of mind. But people found like a lot of clicks in the Daily. So a lot of people do like the Daily. They like that they can, you know, make it look like a native ad and like a native news article. Folks really like that. So that's worked really well for folks in '23. I assume that'll work in '24. And the Insider is specifically more if you're like, I want to reach, you know, more of Jason's audience. Because this goes out on his LinkedIn, but it also hits the inbox. So it's kind of a nice two for one. You get LinkedIn, you get Zaster. I'm sure it's probably maybe cheaper than some of the spends on LinkedIn. So yeah, good way to tap into that network as well where everyone's spending their time.

Almost 50,000 subscribers on Insider.

Pretty good. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think, I think Jason M. Lemkin was just named like a Talent Voice or something on LinkedIn, like, soundly raised.

So it's growing pretty fast. See, you're getting a ton of impressions there. It's pretty good.

Yeah, it's for— and the ad units are big. They're like billboard style, as I call them. So really good one to be on there is The Insider. But just a few things on maybe the year-roundness and the evergreenness of it. So the podcast I really love because it's audio format. It's consistently ranking in the top the top podcasts in the charts around the world actually. It's not just the US. I was just looking at this the other day. Yeah, depending on the country, it ranks different spots, but it does actually rank in multiple countries, which is exciting. But yeah, the podcast is great. I would say especially like, you know, year round what we do is we do original content on the podcast. We do CRO Confidential, which we added this last year in 2023, and we are continuing into 2024. Those are some of our top episodes in 2023. This is one that Sam Bland from Founders Fund does. He interviews CROs only on like, you know, what's tactical, what's going on. I know there's one with Toast that has just like blown up in popularity recently. These are quite good and these are on the podcast pretty much exclusively. They come out on the podcast first and then everywhere else on Saastr.com. So yeah, that's fun content we do year round. We do some of the very best sessions from, you know, annual, Europa, in between Workshop Wednesdays. So you're getting a high quality of content and speakers. It goes out right now twice a week. There's 2 episodes a week. We're kind of playing around with that just because depending on how many episodes you have affects how you chart. We've found that 2 for now is like the right sweet spot. So yeah, right now, 2 episodes a week and it's 15-second pre-roll and post-roll. Again, super easy and turnkey. You just need to like send us a script, maybe set up a landing page for folks to go to, and that's it. We do everything else. So it's fairly easy. You don't have to get speakers. Yeah, you don't have to do the content or like, you know, edit audio files like we have to. Super easy. Um, yeah, the weekly is very evergreen as well, and then we'll just we'll wrap on the last two here. Like I said, this goes out every Sunday. You could think of it as like, you know, the Sunday Times for SaaS. I might copyright that tagline, but yeah, it's again, high caliber folks reading this every Sunday. It's our original OG newsletter, if you will. And this is the best content of the week. So I do know folks that will tell me like, yeah, if I've missed, you know, a couple of dailies, I'll open the weekly because it'll basically round up the whole thing for me. So that's a nice feature to have there on the weekly. Honestly, these things are so good. Like when I read them, I'm like, there's too much good content in them. Like such good content too to just learn from, which is why people read it. And so that's the, that's the magic of the weekly. It goes out every Sunday. So if you have something coming where you're like, I know for a fact I've got something in February or March I want to promote or later down the road. Obviously these assets, maybe not obviously, I'll just call out these assets usually do fill up around the time of our events. Because folks want to try and do like a multi-touch campaign with the SaaStr community. Community. So that's one thing to bear in mind is like if you are trying to sponsor something in person and something digitally and you want that kind of like multi-platform, multi-channel marketing effect that these do typically sell out fast just around those months, the month of, the month before, and then the month right after following an event, which is, you know, 6 months out of the year. So fills up pretty fast. The Daily we've chatted about, I know things that have worked really well for, for this one, folks, it's like new ebook or white papers or something that is like a limited time offer. If you have like credits or a pre-order starter program or stuff like that, those have typically done really, really well in The Daily because there's a lot of operators reading it. Again, the Insider we chatted about, it's more billboard style, it's on LinkedIn. So if you specifically want to be associated with, you know, tapping into our LinkedIn audience, That's a really great way to do it. And you can mix and match them throughout the year. So anything else into 2024, David, that you want to touch on?

I think we covered it. We got a lot going on next year. And yeah, we're excited to do it with all you. So should be a great one.

Yeah, there's a lot going on. So just to recap, we've got, you know, Demo Day is going to kick off our year in January. But if you are thinking about doing it, let us know sooner rather than later because then, you know, you probably get more leads because you're on the website for longer. Uh, Europhile will be in June, back to the Tobacco Docks, and then Annual will be the 10th Annual starting on September 10th, uh, back in the SF Bay Area, um, in 2024. And then our media is year-round. And then, you know, as, as in life, the schedule might change. We might add things, definitely won't take away any of these two, but we may sprinkle in some other things in there. But that is our our major events scheduled at the moment. And if folks want to get in touch with you, David, how can they do so?

Easy. The sponsor's email you just sent will end up coming our way. So that's easy. Or just david@saastrinc.com.

Cool. All right. Well, if you guys need any tips for being in New York around Christmas time, hit up David.

Yeah, right. Just come to the Upper West Side. You'll see me.

Yeah, he'll get you a hot chocolate.

Whatever you, whatever you like.

And yeah, we hope this is helpful for folks. Thanks for tuning in on the livestream, and we'll see you for one more of these next week before the holidays really kick in. So thanks everyone for watching. See you next week.

Bye.

Thanks, Steven.