Experience SaaStr Annual

Jason M. Lemkin talks about SaaStr Annual in San Jose, where the conference has grown 25 times bigger since its first year. He describes it as a hub where cloud and SaaS leaders network, meet billionaires, and find community around learning and ambition.
Questions this video answers
25 times bigger
San Jose
July 31, 2019
Jason M. Lemkin
About five billionaires
Chapters
I'm here because this is where the cloud meets. This is where the greatest minds in SaaS are. This week here in San Jose. One of the coolest things I think about SAASTR is that it brings in entrepreneurial energy and talent from all over the world. Sastr is 25 times bigger than it was the first year, which seemed big. The original mission was just to share 12,500 people, all committed to SaaS under one roof. I've met about like five billionaires in the last three days. 15, 20, 30 billion dollar companies. It's next level. The impact that Sastro has had on me is just to think much, much bigger. I want to turn my company into a unicorn. Now, no matter where you are in enterprise or cloud, there's an area that you're really trying to grow in and this is the place where you can make all those connections. No one's going to get anything without trying. You don't get anything without trying in this world. And if you're trying to do something that has a ridicul, low chance of success, they gotta be pretty confident. The topics here, if I wasn't speaking, I would still be here. We always have the feeling deep inside that we're onto something. You get there and you realize like, there's so much more to go. How do I keep growing? People who give up aren't at saster, they're not investing in the next step. Sauster is a startup like every other startup. The community keeps us going. And as hard as it is, we're also very privileged to be in this situation. We're privileged to be able to have this organization that can give back. I read all the Sasser material religiously back in the day, but to see the community that it's engendered is so amazing. Saastr is incredibly important to bring the industry together and most importantly, the people. I went to an early SASR to learn about SAS and the community was so great to me and the knowledge sharing was incredible that I jumped at the chance to try and come here and give back to the community. You spend so much time running your business all year long and you come to Saastr and you realize there's a whole community of other CEOs or COOs who are having very similar challenges as you and you can actually sit and talk about what are some strategies to overcome those challenges. I think it's incredible just to see how much this has grown. I've been coming to SAASTR for the past couple years and this year just the roster of speakers, the enthusiasm and the ability for a community to come together and really rally around an incredible amount of resources. It's just an amazing thing to see.










