SaaStr Annual 2022: Attendee Know Before You Go Webinar

YouTube. YouTube. Think that worked? I think we are. All right. We look live on the Internet.

Live on YouTube.

Live on YouTube. Streaming worldwide. Let me share our slides here. Going to present mode here. Cool. Thanks, everyone, for joining us as we get geared up for Saster Annual. I hope you know Jason Lumpkin, who's our Saster CEO and founder, who's joining me here kindly to do our know before youe Go Webinar survival guide Disaster Annual. It is literally two exact weeks away.

Two weeks away. Assuming you watch this video.

2.

What if you watch it, like, next week? Then how long?

Then it'll be even closer.

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

Correct. Yeah. We'll get into all the details.

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

I don't know I was going to say. Anything you want to say? We are celebrating 10 years of Saster.

10 years of Saster.

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

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

Yeah. Epic. All right, cool. We've got over 8,000 people already registered, so thanks to to those who are joining this webinar live and hello to those who will watch it later. We should have more than 10,000 people come on site, so there's a lot to get through. Please drop any questions you have about the event. I don't know if we can really answer, like, investment questions at this moment, but if you have questions On Zastr or the annual. Drop them into the chat. We'll do some Q and A at the end and we're super pumped. It'll be our biggest SASTER annual yet.

Good.

Yeah. Cool. We will be at the San Mateo County Event center this year. So if you came last year at all, it is the same venue and campus as last time. We are using a bit more of it this time, so a little bit has changed which we'll get into. But keep this location in mind. Save it in your phone. San Mateo County Event Center. It is for the. For out of towners. It is sometimes called the San Mateo county, like, convention center. Sometimes it's also called the fairgrounds. It's a little confusing. They're one in the same. As long as you're going to 2495 Delaware street, you'll be at the right place. There's also going to be a ton of signage. So once you get down there, as you can see the fence line that Jason's in front of, you'll start seeing signs for SAS Randall, including like traffic signs, fence lines, lots of people pointing in the right direction. So that will help. A quick note. We will be outside this year. Not sure if everyone knows that. If you didn't come last year, we are going to be outside again this year. It's festival style. To quote other people. It's been called the Coachella of sounds, if you will. It's kind of like an outdoor music festival. It's outside. There's a lot of tenting. There are some indoor spaces for some chillier mornings and you need to take a break from the sun. But you know, we are going to have 10,000 people in the Bay Area, so we figured we would enjoy the. The nice weather and take it outside again this year. There's a lot of elbow room, but it does get a little chilly in the early mornings and the evenings, so definitely bring layers. I know a lot of our sponsors do like specific swag that is geared towards the outdoors. A lot of them give away like sunglasses, hats, et cetera. Still get to bring those if you want to make sure you have it handy. Sunscreen also usually hands when the haze burns off from the morning. Bay Area anything to add here, Jason?

No, actually, I think there's a great picture. Just, just there's a lot to cover. But I think the right dress code is what these two folks have, correct?

Yeah.

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

Yeah, that's a good call out. We are very business casual. At the event there is a coat check. So if you do bring your coat you can also stash it for later in the day if you don't want to carry it around during the day. So that makes it a lot easier. You can also stash your bag there, you know, extra swag. You can't. There's a coat check every day and on the last day you can bring it for your luggage etc or once you get there. So there is an on site code check you guys can use for that which is handy. Real quick on health and safety, not going to get too much into the C word here, but this is a fully vaccinated event. Just as a reminder, we have a lot of cool health and safety guidelines here to safely gather 10,000 plus people over three days at the San Mateo County Event Center. So just some reminders here. If you have not been able to deep dive and read our full health and safety guidelines as of yet. I know many of you haven't have already pre uploaded your vaccination proof. So thank you to the 2,000 people who already did that. That is super epic. The more of you who can do this the better and the sweeter your check in will be. It'll be a lot easier. So yes, first and foremost it is. These are stackable. So it's vaccine plus negative COVID test plus daily temperature checks. I know we've gotten some questions lately. Is it either or they are stacked. So you do have to meet all these requirements for health and safety guidelines. So just first on proof of vaccination you will have needed to be boostered. So at any point if you are boostered, that is good to get you in. Or if you received your vaccination recently for various reasons, if you have been, you know, partially vaccinated within the last 270 days in your sequence, that is okay too. Or thirdly, and this is more for international folks and some folks here, if you've recently had Covid and you have what internationally is known as a recovery certificate because you know about 40% of our international attendance is international. They call it a recovery certificate. Overseas, we call it a doctor's letter. Here. This is basically just a sign note for your doctor saying you had Covid on a certain date and that you recovered recently. So, yes, those are the requirements to come in. I know a big question we've gotten lately on the boosters is there are some folks looking to get their booster preannual. Is there any sort of wait period? The wait period was kind of like a older guideline we had for some of our previous events. There's not a wait period and in fact we will have an on site mobile vaccine this year which is new to Sastry Annual and any Saster event. It's the first time we're doing it. We've got some cool partners at Lookout Health who are coming on site to run a. They're running it, not us. Like the medical professionals will be coming to run a mobile vaccine. It's going to be on Monday and Tuesday. We'll get into what's going on on Monday later. But it will be there Monday and Tuesday. So if you need to get your booster, you can come get it on site. They will boost you and then that will be your booster that will be acceptable for entry into SASTER Annual. So that's super cool. You don't even have to go to CVS first. You can just come directly to Saster Annual on Monday or Tuesday and come get vaccinated there. They'll be there for four hours each day and ready to go. So there will be, you know, hopefully that will help with some of the boosters next. Again, it's stackable so you will need to have a proof of negative COVID test within your 72 hours of first entrance. We've gotten a lot of questions about this. It's whenever you first enter into SAS or Annual, so many, some of you come for all three days, the majority of you, some of you only come for a day, some of you are sponsors and you come early. So it's 72 hours upon your first entrance to SAS Annual. Only you will know when that will be. But you can bring an at home test with you. So anything over the counter is cool with us or any sort of lab, you know, PCR antigen tests. If you're coming again internationally, some of you might have to do this anyway. So just bring that proof of negative COVID test with you. A couple things here. If you're doing an at home like over the counter test and it's not one of the ones that does like a lab result for you. Just take a photo of it within the 72 hours of your first entry next to your ID. So take a photo of the result next year ID assuming it's negative. Right. So if it's positive, tell us and we'll refund you because then you can't come. So that's how you do it with like any at home test kit. We highly recommend that people do this before you come to South3 annual because you do never know you might be asymptomatic. We have this happen a lot in Europa. A lot of attendees would pretest before they got on site so that they knew that they'd be able to get in. It's always, you know, rather safe than sorry. We will have testing on site. However, please expect to wait. You know the test, as you guys know, they all take about 15 minutes just for the results after the administration. So really important that you bring your test as much as possible. One just to make sure you can get in. Right. You never know into just to avoid any lines on site. Anything there, Jason to add?

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

But.

But we know for our community, 10 times more people appreciate being extra safe than don't. So we can go on to the next point. But you will get in. Just try to get in fast with the proof and the testing ahead of time.

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

Added that this is new this year, the Saster Square Park. Amelia. So if you want to schedule meetings with folks to come, there's you. You can obviously tell people to meet you at the large tree by the the wall. But Saster Square park is set up for that. It's a great place. Or unlike the co working space which is quieter, you can have folks. There'll be tons of tables, funds, a place to talk. So if you want to set up a one on one meeting or schedule some meetings, this is a good place to do it. Just say meet me at Sars Square park and that's the great place to meet.

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

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

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

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

I know it's gonna be that hard to find.

Only 40 acres.

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

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

We do. It's the fun. Yeah. Right, right, right. Did you have a formal inclusion lounge too, for everyone who's coming as part of our program.

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

20? Yeah, 20.

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

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

Yep. So Tuesday is designed to be a little bit more intimate. We have, we have, we have more. A handful of masterminds that are top performers. Right. That we know there are top decile speakers from the past or will be. So come hear them. We'll be really focused together. You can come early in the morning for registration, which you'll probably hit to. Right. But, but no, there's no real formal content before lunch on Tuesday. Right. There's nothing really going on before lunch. Right. So you can do a bit of a slow roll, especially if you've already gotten, gotten registered before then.

Yeah.

So you're not overwhelmed on day one.

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

So many of the best CROs today. This day, right. So many CROs. Right. These ones are super popular. Cloudflare deal. Just picking them all up. Who else do we have? We have a ton, right? Yeah, they're super pa. I don't know how many. We've got like seven or eight CROs here.

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

And there'll be an early if for folks that watch this. I will try to have some early morning networking if you want to come early. So you can come as early as 8 o'.

Clock.

If you want to make that extra connection when things are quiet, come at 8 o' clock and meet a few great people.

Yeah, Reggie will be open. We'll be open for you. We'll be ready. Okay. Third and final day of staff stranual. Thursday, September 15th is always money day. Some call it VC day, some call it money day. They're the same. Lots of VC content. State of the Cloud is back with Bessemer. Jason's doing a new state of the markets. After some popular tweet threads and HubSpot, co founders are making a surprise, not so secret surprise appearance this day as well. Yeah, and.

It looks like we'll have Andreessen Horowitz, Norwest initialized Lightspeed benchmark. Just about everyone you could possibly imagine, right? There's also. You probably hit it. There is a me to VC program for founders. Right. So you can apply on the SAS Jo annual website or an app. And we've got over 1,000 VCs coming annual. So apply. Upload your metrics and your data and folks will reach out to you. But Thursday, even if you're not fundraising, if you just want to learn how venture capital works, how the system works, how to take advantage of the system, how to make sure the system doesn't take advantage of you, over half the content here will all be about how money works. But then we'll have incredible sessions. Right? The founders of HubSpot. Well, I've revenue confidential what some of the top CROs really talk about and more and more. So there's plenty to do. But these are the secrets to how Money works in SaaS and Cloud.

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

And everyone's an expert in something that's coming. That's true everyone's an expert in something. It's fun to do your own brain day too.

It is fun. Yeah. So yep, make a brain a topic. So that's the two things to do. Join one, make one and you can make a few actually. And yeah, please plan on, you can plan on doing these now. So as you saw, it's live. There are people starting to network now to get a jump start on networking. You can sign up on site, which they do. Fill up some of the smaller ones. So always good to do it in advance and then you'll go to the huge brain date lounge to check in and have your brain date. We did link here some of the most popular brain date sessions so far. So you can see some heavy hitters here. You know, Bessemer Battery Ventures, Work Ramp, Snowflake, there's some Carta, there's some really great people you can meet in the brain dates on like a very specific topic. So we linked a few of these here if you want to, you know, once we link you guys the slides. Yeah, if you want to join some of these and to give you a flavor of what's on that's on the platform already. Another way to meet investors is our formal Meet A VC program. So there are a lot of investors on brain Dates. There's a lot of VC content on Thursday which you can sign up for. The third way is our formal Meet A VC program. You can join as a founder, CEO or as an investor. What we do is we connect some of the qualifying CEOs and founders with our top tier investors who are coming to Sastry Annual to meet one another through a series of double opt in meetings. Basically what this means, if you're a founder, you can click this link here, just go to Sastry Annual and click the MeetUPC link. Submit your criteria there. If you're an investor, on the flip side, you'll tell us what you're looking for in terms of funding. What we do is we're going to send each of our investors a list of the CEOs that roughly meet their criteria. So some people are like I only want APAC or some people only want emea. Some people only. Do you know us? Some people do. Only female founders. We basically take in all their criteria, give them a segmented list, so if you meet the criteria you'll be on it. And if they want to meet with you, we'll help them facilitate a double opt in meeting on site during Saster Annual. So we have done this program since 2017. Yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

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

Don't worry about it.

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

I think it was Sahara stage, Amelia. I believe it was Sahara. I think we need to get this right. He was the head of Sahara. He was the number one act on Sarah's age at Coachella this year.

Yeah. Off the charts. We brought annual. We're very, very, very excited about.

And folks that are coming solo is. It's too late to get a bring a buddy pass for Duke to Monarch and they still get one last call. Last call. Okay, so if you're watching this, you should have gotten an email. Check your email. They got someone like me that prefers to bring a buddy and you don't have a buddy with you. We have extra passes for everyone that coming and they can get into Duke to Mont so you can have a buddy come with you to rock out.

Yes, Rock out. It's going to be a lot of fun. There's going to be thundersticks. There's going to be neon. It is outside under a tent. So going along at the festival vibe, it's going to be a ton of fun. It's going to be a good set. We're super excited. Again, we've been chatting with this team. We're very, very stoked to have him come play the big party. Yes. I'm personally very excited that he's never.

Done a cloud event before.

He has not done a cloud.

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

He's done edc, he's done Now Vista and now.

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

All right, on the last day, come back to the breakfast. The VC did breakfast on Thursday, September 15th. We're going to kick it off with a few different breakfasts, meet up with some VCs or meet up, you know, for CEO. Come to the CEO and gross one meet up with some founders. Just if you haven't, you know, met enough people yet, this is a good way to do it on the last day. We do start at nine a little bit later because you know the big parties the night before. There'll be a few different breakfasts here to help jump start and kick off the last day. People ask a lot. Do people come the last day? They do. You know, last year is one of our most popular day threes this after annual. I expect with our attendance this year and the content that is on day three and all the VCs coming that it will also be packed. So people do come on the third day of Saturday annual. So keep that in mind. Last final reminders here. There is a Saster Events app so you can download it. It's just called sastervance. You can look for it in the App Store or the Android. Is it called the Android Store? Android Marketplace. You can tell I have an iPhone. But yeah, just look for Saster Events. You can download it, log in with your email that your ticket is under and like as Jason mentioned, you can book your brand dates through there, book your sessions, see all the speakers, do a bunch of stuff on there. Kind of helpful if you want to take it with you. Fun stuff just to tease out. We do the thing every year called Faster Buck. It's basically how you get swag at the event and people love the flag. It's on the next slide so I'll give you a preview since you're attending the webinar. People love the swag. I mean the water bottle show up everywhere for years. There are people ask, it's like can I just buy some of the swag? We don't do swagger purchase but we do do these faster bucks. So if you want to get extra Saster bucks and therefore swag yourself up with Saster swag. There are ways you can earn additional Saster bucks if you really want to swag yourself up. If you see two things you really want instead of one or three things, earn extra Saster bucks. So the first way to do this is if you come get your badge early. Jason, I have said it's very calm, you know, Sunday and Monday to come and get rats. If you do that, you'll get an extra 10 denomination saster bucks, which is cool. If you bring your negative COVID test with you, like, you'll also get extra Sasterbucks. And this one's any day. So if you bring it Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday. If you bring your test with you instead of getting tested on site, you'll also get extra sapper bucks. So if you bring your test and you come early, that's you've already like tripled your Saster bugs. If you do a brain date, you'll get extra Saster bucks. If you added a trick or tip to our tips and tricks board, which is in the co working space, also get Saster bucks. So we try and make it, you know, a little bit easy but a little bit of a game so that if you guys do these things or come early, you can get extra swag as a reward for being a good citizen of SAS Ranch. This is our cool plan this year. So leave space in your bag. Plan what you want to use your Saster puffs for. There's tote bags. These are super popular at Europa. People love to put their stuff in them throughout the days. There's cats because again, we're outside, sometimes it gets sunny. There's those. These things in the top right are like squishy balls, like stretch relievers. There's fun socks, which people love. There's water bottles, which I mentioned. There are three different T shirts, not just one, three. There's a 10 year one because we're celebrating 10 years. There's Sastor my peach, which is a fun tagline we used before we knew our message coming. So now that's kind of extra fun. And then our classic blue Saster shirt with the logo. These taxis that you see here, one of them is a dog toy for anyone who's a pet parent. And one of them is a squishy one. If you've got a smaller Saster fan at home, who wants to have a hexy, Hexy hexy toy with them? So that is our swag or what?

For your desk.

Or your desk. Yeah.

Yep.

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

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

It's exciting. There's just a few questions here which I'll go through. You guys can drop in any other questions you have for us in the chat. I know people like Q and A. Do booths have a tent over it? Good question. Yeah, all the, all the booths have a tent over it. Some of them have their individual tents. Some of them are like longer rows of tents. But yeah, all, all of our sponsors, while you're chatting with them, have a tent so that you can chat with them throughout the day there. So. Good question. Is Sasha Square park another place where there are booths? No. So the sponsor hall is just in the east parking lot. It is just in that. Sponsors we love. Paul, pull it back up real quick. So if you look at this like this, if you're looking at our campus map, you, we are going to print these campus maps, you guys. So you'll get one once you pick up your badge. So everyone will get a campus map. And there's afterbucks once you get your. Along with your badge. It's like one of the must things you get with your badge. You get a campus map. The sponsor hall is where all the sponsors are. So if you're looking for someone in particular, you got a meeting with someone in particular. You will be in this huge sponsor hall. You can't miss it. It's with all the majority of the big tens will be this cool. Okay, how do I look at all the brain dates? Great question. I sadly just closed it, but I'll come back here. Brain dates, Astra annual. Yeah. Some people are asking for some tips on how to sort and book a brain date. So again, sasha annual.braindate.com once you come in here, there's a few different ways to sort. So the default sort. So without me touching anything, the default sort is by most recent. So it's going to come into most recent. People who have just submitted and added their brain day topics. If you want to go through again, I kind of showed you guys how to go through what's trending. But if you don't want to sort it that way, you can just load it up and it'll default you most recent. You can also hit the filter button if you know you just want to do it on Wednesday of the after annual because that's when you've got it. You could hit apply. There it goes. So this filter thing, this filter buddy is your friend just because there are a lot of rain dates in the marketplace. You can also search which you know I always love a good search. So you could see like you know there's just created, there's highlights. You can search for like a function I can say like marketing and then it'll give me all the topics in marketing there. So we could just do more in marketing. Actually you can also kind of newer if you've done brain with us before, kind of newer now is you can sort by people. So if you see someone in particular you can see like Michael filled out his whole profile. You know, he's got some suggested topics on what he wants to talk about there, et cetera, et cetera. So you can also sort by people. Ryan's dream raid date would be Jason the Jason's Lemkin, Kilcanis and Momoa. That's the very good.

I'll let both of them know.

Okay. Would you please let Momoa know?

I'll let Momoa know.

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

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

Right.

And then, yeah, it was essentially a nice holding pen. Outdoors.

Music.

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

Yeah, Correct. So again, I don't. I. You'd be more comfortable just doing yourself. But it will be on site. There's like live tv.

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

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

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

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