SaaStr Insider Webinar: Announcing SaaStr Demo Day

Okay, um, cool. We're gonna get started. So hello everyone, um, tuning in. We're back for another SaaStr Insider webinar, um, that we do every Thursday at 9 AM. I'm gonna make Waylon here a co-host. I can't— oh, he's a co-host. Hello! Cool. So we are going to kick off today's webinar. Yeah, cool. Here's Waylon. Today we have a very special topic. We're gonna be talking about faster demo day. So let me try and go full screen here. Okay, cool. If you're new to this weekly series that we do on Thursday, I know a lot of people tune in on the livestream. We do this every Thursday at 9, kind of an overview of what's new share a bit of behind the scenes on what to do for partners and ourselves. And then, yeah, since, and mainly events related. So today we're talking about something super exciting that we have just quietly been launching, but we'll kind of formally launch next week. But we've been talking to some partners about, so we wanted to chat Demo Day. Waylon, how excited are you for Demo Day?

I'm pretty excited for Demo Day. I think it hits on something that people talk about all the time, which is they love SaaStr, but they want to get to talk about the product a little bit more.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that's a good launching off point for today. So what is Demo Day? Yeah, it's the topic of discussion for today. So, um, if you guys are unfamiliar with our digital events, we'll go through that next. Um, it is actually Waylon's first digital event too, uh, but it's been multiple for SaaStr. We did a lot of these starting in, uh, 2020. Um, so yeah, our, our— it's basically our take on the classic concept Demo Day. So we're going to be doing this streaming completely live on Tuesday, January 30th. So I'm kind of at the end of Jan, and really for partners and sponsors to get kind of an extra lead gen, right? It's for some folks, it's actually their end of Q4, folks, it's, you know, beginning of Q1. And we do these all live online. So if you haven't been to a SaaS4Digital event yet, it kind of works like these webinars. Um, that we stream online. We do like a full kind of promotion and like full circuit press tour for it. Um, and the idea behind Demo Day, which is not something we've done as an either digital or in-person event previously, um, we just thought it would be— again, to Waylon's point, you know, we do have a lot of sponsors and partners that ask us specifically to show off either new features or new, um, completely new products that they've been adding. Or I know a lot of folks have been adding like AI to their products that they want to show off to the SaaS community, especially in the beginning of the year when it's, you know, kind of top of mind for folks as they're budgeting and getting into the year and in the swing of things. So yeah, kind of the tagline of Demo Day is, you know, it's the new year, we're going to go over new apps, we're going to go over new features, and host our first Demo Day, completely digital. We call them like digital mega events to bring together the SaaS community. So yeah, kind of an exciting new thing we're doing. We may do multiple Demo Days if this one goes well, but we're starting off with this one first. So yeah, I'm gonna— this will probably pop me out of full screen, but just wanted to go through, if you haven't been to our previous digital events, I'm just gonna pull a few up here so you have a good understanding of it. So yeah, we did a lot of these digital events between I mean, as recently as last year, we've done digital events. If you've seen kind of like SAS for Annual or SAS for Europa, you know, we always stream those live as well, concurrent with our in-person events. But the idea here is that there's no, like, you know, physical footprint. It's completely and 100% digital, which does mean kind of like our previous digital events or Workshop Wednesday, we do get a big audience on these, right? So I think some things that folks don't realize is just because it's digital, We actually do get a fairly high engagement rate just after the physical events. I do think that's something that is a big differentiator for us. And then we do reach our international community. So we host these at, I think it's 8:00 AM Pacific starting time so that, you know, we're kind of hitting the European crowd that we have and Asia-Pacific crowd in like their afternoon, evening. And then obviously it's, you know, kind of midday for the East Coast and then early for the West Coast. So. That is something we do try and bear in mind and then something to keep in mind if you do decide to partner up for Demo Day. It is an international community that you're going to reach. And then some folks do, much like today, watch on the livestream or they watch after the fact. So you'll get folks during and after event as well. So all good things on our digital events to keep in mind there. I've just pulled up a few examples here of some of our previous digital events. So Faster Build was one that we did in, I want to say, March of 2022, so just last year. You can see we do, do a mix of what we call earned and unearned content. So, you know, demo. So the idea for Demo Day was there will be demos from folks that are, that are not a sponsor, that are just, you know, really innovating in SaaS to help founders. And then we'll obviously have a number of partners and sponsors who will be demoing either, like we said, a new feature or a new product launch in January. So This one gives you a good sense of kind of like the names and topics we've had in the past. Yeah, you could see, you know, I did like a session with DigitalOcean. We had the CPO for Notion. He again didn't really, I think he cut off Notion a little bit in that one. So that one's a good example to see. But mostly on, most of our content in the past has been more content-driven versus product-driven. So that's a nice differentiator from Demo Day. And then how these work too. We do, which is really nice, is like, I'll show you in an upcoming slide, we do embed all these sponsor sessions into the agenda. And so that makes it really easy for folks because as you are going through, you'll be able to just register directly on the site, and it does help with like we-gen and delivery for sponsors. I'll go back on our post-events. And yeah, we did a bunch of these, you know, like I said, even as recently as last year, we did Build, which I, you know, have linked in this deck. It's just and then that was the one I was on. And then Faster Scale, which we used to do in person and then swapped to being digital. But yeah, there are some good examples here as well of, of the kind of topics and format if you are interested. There are some good examples to kind of click through. Yeah, we did a bunch of these as kind of like different themes. So Scale was playbooks to scaling faster. Build was more around like building really great products. But again, you know, it was more content-based than product-heavy. And then Saastr Money was all about like visas. So this will be our like first dedicated digital event of 2024, 'cause obviously it's the new year. But yeah, so the concept behind Demo Day, which I think we've talked a bit now about, is to put, you know, a classic Saastr style spin on Demo Day. And really we've tagged this as like founders demoing founders. So ideally we're gonna bring in, you know, a handful of CEOs and executives that we just know in our community, as well as partners and sponsors. So kind of a differentiator here too. I think most folks are used to having just, you know, their sales team or maybe their product team demo. We're really trying to get, you know, the founders or your C-suite or your CPO demoing the product to others. 'Cause again, the whole point is to have a SaaSer-style spin on a classic demo day. It is something too, and I'll let Waylon touch on this a bit if I missed anything. Something we saw at our in-person events is, We did see more executives doing quote-unquote "book duty" because our community and audience in particular is so like VP level and above. If you think about, you know, yourself, if you're in that level, you kind of don't want to be demoed by someone who's maybe newer to the company, who maybe doesn't know all the answers to products and features. So yeah, that's kind of our, our work for Demo Day. It's something that again, we saw work really well in person at our SaaStr annual event this last September. And it's something we're trying to carry forward to this event. But yeah, Waylon, anything I missed there on kind of like the executive level approach? Oh, you're muted.

Sorry. Yeah, I was in trouble with my mouse there. No, I think you hit it. But I think the one thing that's really nice, and we did see this, like you said, a lot of execs being at SaaStr and actually doing booth duty is that it creates a connection with the company in a way that it just doesn't when it's a salesperson or even a sales leader demoing. So I think that A founder knows the story, they know the pain, they know the reason that they started the company better than anybody else. And so I think in addition to demoing the product, doing a little bit of that origin story is super impactful.

Yeah, I will say it does save time too if, you know, your C-suite or your founder is the one demoing the product, right? It does save you some cycles of like, because so many of our buyers are at executive level, typically they do ask to engage somebody at your org in their executive level. So you're kind of just saving yourself a few steps if you start there. Obviously bring in other people to the deal cycle. That's how we do it here internally as well. But it will probably save you some costs and some, some budget in the long run because you, you're gonna, you know, pass by those steps.

Yeah, absolutely. Quick path to executive alignment.

Exactly. Yeah. And then just to give folks a kind of snapshot of who will attend Demo Day. So we did this based off who has attended our previous digital events, again, we expect a very similar audience here. And then just overall in our faster community, whether it's in-person or digital, more than, like we said, more than half of our attendees are VP level and above. So again, it's gonna be like the buyers, the executive, or at least a party in the decision-making team that you'll be speaking towards on these demos, right? So again, high-level audience, and we expect, you know, a strong balance of CEOs, CROs, and revenue leaders, and, and then also investors to attend the inaugural Demo Day. Um, and I will say too, again, like, you know, we do simulcast these live across our social media channels. People do watch a lot of these now on the live stream, um, and they do interact with it post-event. Like, we have the whole backing power of faster.com that goes into these events. Um, so there is, you know, basically a full court press leading up to the event in all of our newsletters, on the website, we promote it on the podcast and all of our media. And then we have the actual live event day, and then we promote these sessions afterward as well. So again, great way to reach the software audience if, you know, you've been looking specifically in the new year for something where you can not only showcase your product, but also get some leads from it. So that's what we'll talk about now. So yeah, how this works, if you are interested in partnering with us and showcasing your your product during Demo Day, previous, like, like our previous digital mega events. So basically how this works, and there's a slide, I think next, that shows the process. Attendees sign up on fastfordemoday.com, and in the signup, they're basically prompted to choose their sessions as an attendee beforehand. So we, it's really important for our sponsors because we've seen from, you know, our 10 or so digital events we've done previously, the time to lead value here is really clear at our digital events. Like the sooner you can get into the initial launch, the better, right? You're getting that first impression, you're kind of getting the first wave of marketing promotions of folks signing up. Again, we constantly promote these, but there's kind of like two big waves. So there's one at launch, which is gonna be next week, December 15th, and then there will be another push on like January 15th, which is like kind of like the end-all, you know, hockey stick right before the event. Everyone is signing up. But you know, if you, if you can imagine a sponsor being in that first kind of push next week versus just the 2 weeks before, you're gonna have more leads if you're in that initial send. So it is something where, you know, there is a clear time to lead value here. And how this works, we really only have one level for Demo Day just because we wanted to keep it nice and simple and actually maybe as turnkey as possible, like just getting your executives to come. You know, hopefully they've demoed the product previously or can dust something off or put in some new features. And again, it's meant to be something kind of turnkey. To showcase to the SAS community. But really, you'll have about 15 minutes to showcase and demo the product. And that's including Q&A, right? So you want about 10 to 12 minutes of content, leave a few time for Q&A. And this can be an existing product or a new product feature. We've had folks kind of at annual or Europa kind of put in either when they're doing something a little bit more product-related, more so at their booth. But yeah, it's either or, right? And again, the lens being that As much as you can share how, you know, maybe you use your own product or how other executives are using it, our audience is very high level. That's kind of the lens we're going for for Demo Day. And ideally as well, right, in the spirit of SaaStr, we're always on the topic of helping people scale faster. Hopefully, you know, you can demo or showcase your product in a way where other SaaS executives are mindful of it because I think in 2024, right, we've seen Already in the last half of '23, everyone's talking about efficiency and budgets and scaling. And I think as much as your product can help folks do that, that would be the thing I would personally highlight and showcase to your audience because that's what is top of mind of folks in the new year, right? Like everyone needs lead, everyone needs to get more efficient. So if your product does any of those things, I would show off that. And yeah, and it's great because as a sponsor of this, you'll get your leads kind of in the run-up to the event. And then obviously you'll get 'em on the day of, you'll get like a final lead delivery of folks who sign up for your demo, right? So, and it does, again, it doesn't mean that everyone will show up in the room, but you have somebody interested as a lead who wants to see your product. So really good too to have a follow-up action plan set out here. But yeah, Whalen, what did I, what did I miss on sponsorship or anything you wanna add?

Yeah, so I would just say one thing in terms of audience. So obviously, you know, founders and go-to-market executives, are kind of our key personas, but we have tremendous success with almost every persona. So we have people who come back every year at SaaStr that are targeting CIOs and CISOs, even finance personas, products. So even if you're not a go-to-market product, it's still gonna be a great audience for you. And I think what you hit there is just timing of the year to get these leads. Speed to lead is obviously super important, but it's been a tough year, I think we can all say, for a lot of people in SaaS, especially SaaS companies selling to other SaaS companies. So getting a head start on the year with a bunch of leads in the first month of the year, I think is really impactful and the sales teams will love that.

Yeah, I think that's the, that's a really great point, right? Like you kind of, I know some companies, right? For most companies, I would say it's their, that's their start of Q1. You know, you're kind of wiping the slate clean in the new year. So this would be maybe a good chance to get a good amount of leads to get going, right? Fall behind later. At least we started the year strong. Or if for some of those who do, you know, kind of the Salesforce quarters, for those that it's the end of Q4, maybe you need the extra leads to enter your quota because yours actually ends in January. That could be a positive there too. But I think more and more folks are seeing that, you know, time is kind of of the essence too to get ahead on leads and product. And this is a really great way to do this. It's a big reason of why we picked January specifically to do a demo day, right? We've been having daily meetings with partners and sponsors between Waylon, the rest of our sales team, our production and events team. Like, this is something that folks have been seemingly asking for, right? It's like, I just need leads in the new year. Like, I'm, you know, my quota rolls over and I gotta start delivering. So So yeah, this might be a good way to help do that. Cool. We've talked about our audience a lot, but if you haven't seen it before, if you haven't been to one of our digital events, this is more specific to our digital events community audience, right? Again, a lot of CEOs and founders, the whales, you know, a lot of product sales and marketing, go-to-market folks as well as we have seen more across our digital and in-person events, more CTOs, CXOs, etc., right? I think that just goes to the buying committee is just getting a lot bigger on everything. Well, a good spread here of decision makers. You know, we do, as we mentioned, we do have a higher sort of audience engagement, I think, than maybe virtual events, if you have that in your mind. If you're unfamiliar with our digital events, not that it's the same, but I would recommend going to our next Workshop Wednesday on Wednesday. It'll give you a good flavor for what our digital events are like. But you'll see in our Workshop Wednesdays, or you can even watch one on our YouTube channel, we have them all linked there. You'll see high audience engagement. Like, they're an hour, but we really only do 20 minutes of content. And then it's literally, we go the full, we always have the full hour and like people will do Q&A for 40 minutes. Sometimes it'll go over the top of the hour and that is all organic, right? These are just folks from the SaaStr community turning in, none of tuning in, none of that is like preceded. We're not like, hey, will you come to Workshop Wednesday and ask some questions? It's all pure, like, actual engagement. And I think it's been great because we've seen in the last couple weeks too, like, more CEOs, more like prior Saastr speakers join Workshop Wednesdays. So yeah, if you haven't had the chance, that'll give you a good flavor for what our, like, full-day digital events are like. There are a fair mix of really great companies that come. And there are some companies that don't miss, you know, a Sound for Vet. So, yeah, I think we've hit that one, but just a good reference there. And then, yeah, this is to my point, like, in the, how the in-agenda placement works. So on, you know, faster demo day, once the agenda is live next week at the first launch, this is how it will work where, like, you know, your, your topic will be literally in the in-agenda and that's how folks sign up for your session. They are required to at least pick one session. So, anyone that's signing up for the event is at least picking one session, which makes it good because, you know, they're, they're kind of opted in. We send like 2 calendar reminders, all that kind of stuff to help with the organic opt-ins on the day of and kind of like that audience interaction. And then we do as on our backend team, you know, try and aggregate some of the questions that do come in through streaming and try and hit those as well. So again, wide audience, global audience, a lot of decision makers, and then you do get the video delivery as well, right? So if it's, something where, you know, your executive can take the time to do Demo Day, then you also have this asset now handy, right? Where you've got like a live demo, you have interactions with the faster community, it'll give you a good sense of what people are asking, maybe what they want to see. Could be also good for like your CPO if they want real-time feedback from faster. It was a good way to do it live. And yeah, it is 100% live. So none of this is prerecorded. And we do with our, like our previous digital events, share these long tail on SaaSverse. So you can see here some of the screenshots of like, you know, we promote it on our YouTube, we promote it on our livestream. And we've had, you know, again, kind of crazy amount of viewers watch these in the past. It really depends on, you know, speaker. If you have a C-suite, obviously there's usually a higher and more of an audience there. And then yeah, so, so yeah, it's usually on the day of, there's a fair amount of views that you'll get. As well. We did link some opt-in engagement here. So again, if you're thinking of, if you wanna participate in Demo Day, just let us know. We do have these examples kind of handy so you can see the amount of like views that they all got from. These are real views from past digital events as well as the examples. So again, you can kind of see how folks talk about their content to Disaster's audience. So yeah, last but not least, it's kind of like what's included if you do sponsor. We've already hit this, but just as a recap, it is like a live 15-minute demo with Q&A. It's that live video and social distribution. Promoted to SaaStr community, you know, pre, during, and then post-event. You do get that dedicated lead capture. So on average, we would say that's between 100 to 300. That could be more, that could be less. That's just an average range, right? Of what you can expect to get. Again, time to lead value, super important there. That's why there is more of a wider range as well. And you do get that dedicated like post-event video delivery so you can have that asset to use and post-event promotions across SaaS. Anything else on Demo Day here, Whalen?

Yeah, I would just say like based on the SaaS audience, you know, these are gonna be your economic buyers frequently in, in sales cycles that you're having. So I think it's an incredible audience. It's not just demoing a typical audience. Like you're getting in front of an audience that actually has buying power. You might have active sales cycles with some of these companies. So I just think it's a really powerful audience to be getting in front of. Especially with an executive.

Yep. No, it's a, it's a really great point. And I know a lot of folks have been, that have been coming to us have been asking us about maybe bundling this with our media. So we've touched on this a bit, but just as a recap, we do have like several newsletters. So a lot of these assets do all touch on like if you don't bundle them, these are the assets we do use to promote Saastr Demo Day. So we have saastra.com, we have the Saastra Podcast, And then we have 3 newsletters, one of which is on LinkedIn, 2 is on like traditional email marketing newsletters. They do get— I can't even tell you anecdotally how many people tell us like in a given week that they're just like lurking and like reading the newsletter or like random emails I'll get from like, oh hey, I saw this in your newsletter. Can I do something similar? Like it's multiple times a week. So yeah, there's some good lurkers in the team. Community that are reading these newsletters. Yeah, the Insider's cool because it goes out on LinkedIn and I think Jason M. Lemkin just seemed like a top voice or something. So it's got probably even more reach now. Yeah, this is how we'll promote it. I do know some folks in the past with our digital events have bundled like the digital event sponsorship plus media. It is a great way, right? If you're digitally trying to get in front of everyone to do kind of a multi-asset approach, because then you get the extra oomph of like, you can actually do like a pre-roll for the podcast or a post-roll. Those are super easy. Again, we try to make these super simple. This one's really turnkey. You just send us a script. If you have a landing page to point to or an offer to point to, fantastic. We really just need a script. We record it, we do the whole thing. It's really set it and forget it. So I do love our podcast because it's really easy. I'd say it's the easiest list for the most reach. And the weekly is amazing because this is our like longest standing newsletter. It's the most interacted with. This goes out every Sunday, so you can imagine, you know, there's quite a few signs on Sundays between now and January 30th when Demo Day happens. And the daily, I would say, has been gaining in popularity just because of the frequency that we send it, and it is kind of a larger ad unit. People really like to do a placement in the daily to reinforce what they're doing on digital media. And then same thing on the insider, like if you want kind of a multi-channel approach, and you're more into LinkedIn, this one goes out across LinkedIn, but also an email. Like, I get a push notification on my LinkedIn when it gets published, and then I also get an email. It's kind of nice. You're like hitting people's inboxes from LinkedIn delivery, deliverability, which is pretty good. You're kind of hitting folks in their inbox there, um, and on LinkedIn, which is, you know, where everyone is spending their time. Um, anything else you want to add?

Well, I just think I'll just kind of go back to something I said at the beginning, which is, you know, SaaS is such a powerful community. And part of what's made such a powerful community is the focus on thought leadership. And the one thing that we consistently hear is I would love a chance to talk about my product more. And so this is a chance for everybody who's, who's worked with us in the past and wanted to be able to be a bit more product focused. This is the opportunity to have, you know, more or less a commercial conversation around your product, which I think is super Powerful.

Yeah. And I think too, it's, and you know, the fact that we're calling it Demo Day, it's very straightforward of like, people also know what they're signing up for, right? Like I think with our previous digital events and especially during annual and Europa, like they know they're signing up for a piece of content that's more tactical, that's not product focused. Obviously with something that's named like Demo Day, the whole tagline and the whole website says we're fan— I'll show you guys later. It says we're founders demo founder, like The whole point, right, is like it's demo day. Like you're going to see a product, like you know what you're getting yourself into. So I think so as well, like, you know, that's just a good point there of the whole thing is kind of labeled demo day for a reason so that folks know what they're getting themselves into. And yet you can be more like Waylon said, straightforward. And the whole point of having your executive do it is so that they can showcase it in a way that is the most helpful, the most, you know, time effective for the audience that Fasterhead has.

Yeah, I think like there's no bait and switch. People are here to— they're here to get pitched. And I think that, you know, oftentimes we have people who might be interested in our products, but they're not necessarily ready to engage with a salesperson yet. They don't necessarily want the pressure of that interaction. And so being able to come out and see a product demoed by a founder, it's a great way to start a sales cycle. And with that lead delivery, those— I think those are going to be some pretty hot leads.

Yeah, agreed. All right. If you guys have any questions, Waylon, how can folks reach you?

You can reach me on LinkedIn, Waylon McGill, or at waylon@saastrinc.com. Cool.

And if you guys have any other questions, I'm just AI at Saastr Inc. That's just my initials. Super easy. Yeah, you can reach out to us. Happy to help you guys sort it on Demo Day if that is something you are interested in. You heard it here first. We really have not, like, even launched this to the rest of the community yet. So yeah. Exciting times on Demo Day. Hopefully, you know, you can join us for it. If not, watch it live to get a flavor for it. But yeah, we're super excited. We've done these digital events again historically with really good response in the past. So we're excited to do Demo Day in Q1.

Thanks everyone.

Thanks everyone. Yeah, thanks everyone for tuning in. Thanks Waylon for co-hosting and we will see you guys next Thursday. Bye. Bye.