SaaStr Insider LIVE: Sponsor Kick off to Annual 2025

As well as go through some high level, you know, talking points for the day of what we want to go through. This is our official first webinar of the Sastra Annual 2025 season, if you will. So we're excited to be restarting these and kicking them off with you guys and go from there. So, yeah, it's coming up, so let me share my screen. Awesome. Cool. Thanks everyone for joining. So if you are new here, let me just make David a co host so he can also jump in. There we go.

Hello.

How's it going?

Good, good. I'm here. Sorry, I was a. Now I'm a. Now I'm a co host.

You ready to chat? Saster Annual?

Let's do it.

Okay, let's do it. So I think first and foremost, if you are new here, there, there might be a reason for that, right? So just give an overview of what these are or if you're watching back the live stream or the replay at any point. We do these every Thursday as it gets closer to Saster Annual and I'll show you guys. We're literally just within 100 days of Sastry Annual. So we decided, we decided now would be a good time to restart these. If you were a sponsor last year, you may know these. We do these every Thursday, 9am Pacific. We record them, we live stream them, we send you guys the recording and the slides afterwards. And then starting next week when the sponsor portal goes live, we put them into our sponsor portal to make it easy to find. So if you ever miss them, don't worry about it. We do cover a lot of information here. And then part of our goal for this year was, I know we have a lot of AI companies that are coming on to sponsor the Saster Annual and some of you have told me it's your first event ever. It is your first time doing an event at Sastra. Size and scale. And so these are really meant to help both new sponsors and returning sponsors make the most out of your Sastra Annual sponsorship. You do not have to attend them all. You can send different folks, you can watch the playback or just read the recaps. But yeah, everything you would ever need is pretty much covered in these. So, yeah. Anything you want to add there, David, on kind of like our goals and just an overview?

No, I think you covered it really well. We'll also make the decks available to you if you want to view them that way. And it's an opportunity to ask questions. But of course, you know, you could always reach out to me directly or Amelia or Mona or anyone else you work with at Saster. So we're all here to help.

Awesome. So yeah, without further ado, we wanted to use this one as more of the formal kickoff. Give you guys just like rough timelines again. I know a few folks are like why are you guys starting this so early in the year? Well, I think you've noticed hopefully by now as a sponsor we didn't move the SAS re annual in terms of time frame. So we did it last September, moved to May of this year. We'll talk about those implications just in a second. But yeah, we will be back at the San Mateo County Event Center. So if you were a sponsor the last few years, that is the same venue that we've been in. For those who are new, It's a massive 40 acre campus, indoor, outdoor. Once it gets closer, you know, we'll share tips and tricks for, for getting around the venue in the next few weeks. We'll share things like hotels and all that stuff to start thinking about. But yeah, these are the main addresses. This is more so for reference on the slides. And yeah, as David mentioned, these are also a great forum to ask questions. Many of you have the same questions. So it's great for us to to give you some of those ins sites live. But as always you can reach out to any one of us. So David, myself, Mona, you can also feel free to CC and if you're not sure who to reach out to, you can just hit events@sas drink.com that goes to all of us and we'll make sure you answer your questions there. You'll also start to notice a lot of the emails and like sponsor newsletters will start to come from events@sassering.com so you'll kind of get used to this email if you are not already so Sasrael 2025. I was trying to think about this last night of how many sester annuals we've done. I think it's 11. I don't know, I actually kind of like lost count and well, I'm pretty.

Sure last year was the 10th, so I'm gonna go with 11 also.

Yeah, I'm going with 11. I think that's the number. So yeah, we've been doing this for a long time actually now more than a decade of Saster annuals. That's not even counting how long Saster itself has been along, which is a few years previous to that. But yeah, we are one of the world's largest community for SaaS and now AI and yeah we do this event yearly to bring everyone together. So there's a lot of exciting things I want to talk about. But again, just a brief overview. If you're newer, watching this back as a newer person, you know Sasser annual, about 10,000 attendees across three days. Festival style. As we mentioned, you know, it's indoor, outdoor. There's some elements there which are quite nice. A lot of networking sessions which we usually open up, you know, in the like six to eight weeks before Annual. So nothing to do there yet. Lots of investors. David and I actually have an exciting announcement next week involving investors which we'll tease but not talk about till next week. Really great speakers. We'll show you some of them today and then partner. So yeah, there's, there's a lot that goes into Saster Annual. It's three days. It is jam packed. I know a lot of people just as like a brief overview, do use Saster Annual to also do things like customer meetings. We'll talk about those briefly today. Um, it's a great way to do that. Obviously I know the number one goal for most folks is to drive, you know, net new leads and actual revenue generated at the show. And we'll help you do that in a variety of ways. But also, you know, it is in the Bay Area in May, so it's also a great time to touch base with your, your current customers as well. And many people do use it for that reason too.

And like I said, you know, an opportunity to bring them to Saster as well. Yeah, right. It's something that a lot of sponsors do. I'm sure, you know, we'll get into it in weeks. But if there's like a key customer, you know, that you want to bring to Saster, you know, let us know, we're happy to help. But that's just a great way to get more value out of the event.

100%. Yeah, it's something. Again, just things to start thinking about. I like this article because this was announcing just kind of our run rate from December and then when we just did the numbers for January, because January just ended, the numbers held the same. So that was great. So we are still running at about 156% of last year even with the time shift. So yeah, it's super crazy. You know, people have been asking us why the date changed, et cetera. We for Those who are OGs here, you'll remember this after Annual used to actually be Q1 pre 2020Let's say. So it used to be Q1 earlier in the year. It was like the last week of Jan, first week of Feb. Had to move it, obviously, because of the world change. And so, yeah, we kind of landed on May as a middle ground of. Of getting back to being early in the year because we are indoor outdoor. You know, February is not a good time. It's literally been raining all weekend. Bay Area, like, it would not be a good time to do an indoor outdoor event. And we still need about a month in our venue just with the way we set it up and do this whole indoor outdoor campus. And so May has been a good time for this year. Will likely do it again next year in May, assuming this one's a hit in May, which it's on track to be. And yeah, it's, you know, it's good weather in May. It's a little bit earlier for leads, which I think is quite nice. And it's away from maybe other conferences. I know our sponsors do. I know a lot of you guys also did. Also did Dreamforce and also did Inbound. And it's sometimes hard to split resources, so hopefully now it's a little bit less tension just for resource constraints. Um, but, yeah, super excited on the growth and trajectory for this year's annual. Definitely the AI Momentum has a lot to do with it, but, yeah, we're. We're stoked about this, man. You know, it's always a toss of the dice when you move dates. So nice to see it's been a good move for us. And this is on sasser.com if you want to read the whole thing. You know, the article is linked in the slides, but, yeah, I think part of the other reason. I'll just talk about this for a second because we've been working hard on this is. Is we have. I want to say, since I've been here, maybe the best lineup since the year I started, which was. I started in 2017, but my first annual was 2018, and we had. I mean, some of these folks are actually at the 2018 annual, but I would say this is our best lineup since that. Like, it's so crazy to me. And this is not everybody, right? This is who we can announce publicly. Like, there are some people I have embargoes on I can't say anything about yet. So all those will come out in the next few weeks. There's some. There's some. There's even more exciting ones coming. But, yeah, I would say this is. You know, I'm biased because I do manage the speaker scene, but I'm biased I do think this is one of our best lineups definitely of recent years. Probably again up there with the 2018, like, mafia of strangle speakers we had. But yeah, I mean, so many great companies, right? Like Dropbox, I mean, HubSpot, right. Because we moved the dates. Like, now the Yomini can come speak at the event. Like, it's not a conflict anymore. Bill, we had the founder last year. The CCO is coming this year. Service Titan, right. They're one of the great free IPO companies this year. Canva, who's on this, like, also one of the great pre IPO companies of 2025. Snowflake, doing great things. They're going to be chatting with. Observe, right? That's an AI company, obviously. Snowflake is huge, not only to SaaS, but the Bay Area right there, right in San Mateo. You can practically see their offices from the fairgrounds. Like, such a great one. Rubik, who, like, just went public, right? OpenAI, obviously, descript, which is a really great tool I love to use doing things in AI and video editing. Stripe, obviously. Huge. Again, there's other big names in this we cannot formally announce yet, but even with those alone, I'm like, that lineup's pretty good, man. David, who are you most excited about?

It's a good lineup. I'm excited to see the Grammarly folks. I think they just made that. That merger with Coda. I think that's super interesting what's going on there. I think the script is really cool company.

That's a cool company.

Yeah. So, I mean, they're all great, you know, Service Titan, they had the IPO. I think they IPO'd in December, so. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

They're on fire.

They're on fire. There's a lot of. You know, I know there's a. There's a few other names on the list. Well, depending on who you ask, there's other. A long list of pre IPO companies or a shorter list. And many of those you will see on the eventual lineup by the time it is May. But yeah, I think exciting times, like, even if you're a sponsor and it's something, again, just because we're doing this in like an overview format, you know, we'll get into this in the coming weeks. But I think it's always good, too, to allow your teams to go to the sessions they want to go to. Obviously, there's really great speakers and content. You know, I am an Advocate of rotating folks in the booth, doing different schedules and shifts so people can go to the content they want to go to. Like, yeah, we do record it, but you know, most of our speakers do live Q and A. They stick around and chat afterwards. It's just a lot different than watching it back on the YouTube later or kind of forget it or like missing it and forgetting it. So, yeah, I think that's just something else to keep in mind. We got really great lineup. So many good logos, so many more that are yet to be announced. So yeah, this is something I'm personally stoked on. I think it's a phenomenal speaker lineup. And for those of you who remember from last year, why this is also good for sponsors is, as you'll remember, our two main stages, the sponsor hall is in the middle of those two main stages. So in between these folks. Right, it's going to be you guys. And so again, that's going to drive a lot of traffic to the hangar west because Hangar west or east that the sponsor. Yeah, Hanger west, but the sponsors are in. So yeah, it's going to drive a ton of traffic just based on these, you know, names and faces. And so that's also super exciting. So, yeah, the reason we're kicking off what maybe feels like earlier than normal is. Yeah, the Sastriano actually is starting within 100 days. So something to not panic about if you're a sponsor, but just, you know, have in the back of your mind, as we're kicking off today to start thinking about and planning for. We did come up with a short list of things to maybe start doing now if you're getting into the mode and actions of. Okay, it's about 100 days away. What can I do now? As many as a lot of you have already, you know, send us your sponsor logos so we can make sure we're using the most high res, most accurate ones on the websites as we start to ramp up all of our promotions as well. Well, make sure, you know, we, we sent out an invite to this webinar if you're the right point of contact and you got it, great. If you're like, you're probably missing some people, let us know as well. Just email eventsask.com same thing if you're a sponsor who has a speaking session in it. Also just let us know, right. If that's you, if you're the same person who's going to be handling the speaker coordination or maybe it's somebody else, just let us know so we can make sure they get on the distribution for the specific sponsor speaker communications. That's really the most important three things to do right now. Not a big ask. It'll probably take you five minutes to send your logos and confirm your POCs, but that's just when to do it. Imminently. But just in the next few weeks if you want to send that over to us, please, that would be fantastic. You can also wait till next week when the sponsor portal goes live and submit this stuff there. So it's really just how proactive you can do you want to be? There's a good question in the chat like what, what format should it be if we send it to you now? SVG is good, Illustrator file is fine, EPS is fine too. Basically any high res file version you have, we can always convert it. So yeah, again if it's going to break the limits of your email sender, then yeah, you can wait a week to wait for the sponsor portal to go live and upload it there. But if you, if you can send it now, cool. Either way works. And yeah, just some, you know, high level things to start thinking about. Right? Start thinking about how to staff your booth and who do you want to send. We mentioned that now, right, because booking travel will start to get harder the closer you get to Sas re Annual. Right. Like we release the hotel blocks to sponsors first and then attendees. Sometimes attendees that were proactive and they just, you know, I know some people have already booked some of their hotels in the area. So as much as you know already or how many rooms you need, right. You can also put some in like one name if you already know how many you need. Again, something to just start thinking about when we do put out that hotel information in the next couple of weeks so you, so you can book it right away who to send again. I know schedules have gotten crazy this year, I feel like more than any other year. So this will be anything from, you know, we will talk about in later weeks how you should staff your booth, who you should send. But this could be even something like you know, if you want your CEO to be there, which we do recommend like putting it on their calendar now like just making sure you send them a quick calendar invite so they have it held. They know that they're coming to Saster Annual whether they're in the booth or not. This will be things like, you know, who from your sales team is coming, maybe who from your product and your exec team is coming. And we do recommend a mix that's not just AES, right. Because our Audience skews, VP level and above. A lot of founders, a lot of executives, a lot of technical founders and then the next bucket being like, go to market leaders. We do recommend having your execs be there if they can. And doing a mix of different departments in the booth has actually been what sponsors have told us to be the most feasible formula for trying to build up deals and pipe. Other thing I want to say is start thinking about swag. Right. Like sometimes the process times take longer, especially if you're. If it's getting manufactured overseas and now it's coming here, there may be a slightly longer order fulfillment time, just maybe than the last time you ordered swag just now. You know, if just something to start thinking about. I think that's one that always sneaks up on people is you know, you try and go order your swag like the month before and it takes like eight weeks to make the items. Yeah, go ahead, David.

We just have a quick question from someone and about the logo. Is it a particular, any particular format and also should they email it or wait until the portal's ready?

Yeah, you could do either way. Right. So the format should. EPS is always the best recommended format, but we'll take any other format. Email is good now and again you can wait a week if you want for the sponsored portal to go live, but if you have them handy, I would just send them now to events Test Rank.

Yep. So events at SAS Drink is where it goes.

Yes. So cool. Yeah. Anyways, all that to say just start thinking about your swag. Right. Just again, if you know what kind of items you want and maybe things you want to do that might take longer than usual or maybe longer than you think just to get it all, you know, delivered and set and all that stuff. Booking, travel, like I said, you know, in late Feb, early March, something to start thinking about and also getting excited. Right. Like I know people do varying degrees of promotions on social and their own marketing touting their presence. At Sasser Annual, I've seen people do like full like press releases and interviews and cycles. So really dealer's choice here, you can go either way. But if that's something where you know, you, you want our logos and assets, they'll be in the sponsor portal so you can download them and make your own assets. We'll send you some as well. But yeah, you know, we're within 100 days so we're definitely getting excited. We're definitely feeling a lot of momentum pick up. It's, I don't know, somewhere around like the after the holiday mark got really crazy.

I would say it's been busy, but. Yeah, no, that's good. All good things, I think, for, for everyone coming to Saster. So it's going to be great.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. These are high level timelines. I won't go through them all, obviously. There's a lot of words on this page. So I just went through kind of the only things you need to think about now. We've shared the sponsor portal. We'll go live next week. So we'll next week we'll, you know, walk you guys through the portal. What's in there? This will be in there too. This overview timeline. You know what to do. But if you're looking for things like when are the booth graphics going to be due? Okay, not until April. Cool. You've got some time. The specs, you know, we'll release in a couple weeks, so you'll have plenty of time to do those booth graphics. The floor plans, that's end of the month. Boost selection, that's end of this month activations, that's next month speaker webinar, that's next month. You know, you will again if you're the main point of contact for speakers. You will start getting speaker information starting next week because I know they'll want your speakers and topics by the end of this month ideally. And then slides next month. So again, you'll see some stuff now that's more. So just FYI of like, we'll release the floor plans and we'll start booth selection and then a lot of really great things will start to pick up in March, April and a lot of the deadlines are really in March and April. So no real immediate deadlines now. But I think this is just nice to give you guys a snapshot of, you know, what's upcoming, what you need to know. Obviously this could be subject to change. Like if we move deadlines up, we'll let you guys know back, we'll let you know. But yeah, these are based on, you know, again, we've done this for a while now. So these are our typical kind of time frames. If you see something missing, let us know. If you're like, hey, when would this happen again? Let us know there. But yeah, this is just super high level. And yeah, again, important things to know was we'll go over the sponsor portal next week. We'll talk about this exciting VC update we have between David and myself next week a little bit more. And then, yeah, if I have any more speakers, I can't announce by next week I'll announce those here too. But yeah, lots of exciting updates. Always at Saster.

Super handy slide to have that one.

Kind of lays it all out.

Everything you need to know or all the deadlines?

Yep, yeah, yeah, all the deadlines. The late fees are on here. Again, just things to know in the back of your mind and you can come back to this one later. But this is also, I think, a handy one. I know folks have asked us for this sooner rather than later. So we have the sponsor hall hours here. This is more so like, I don't know, it's the same like configuration. If you were a sponsor last year. Monday is an optional load in day. Tuesday morning you do have to finish your sponsor load in. And I will say most sponsors can finish in that time block. So between nine and one, if you're coming and you're, let's say one of these booths that looks like this and you're just getting your swag delivery, you can safely do that from 9 to 1pm Typically, the sponsors who need to come Monday are doing something like an activation or doing something custom with Saster and they want just a little bit more time to get ready so they don't have to rush on Tuesday morning and just like kind of the momentum and rush of everything that happens on Tuesday morning, May 13th. So just know that, right? It doesn't mean you have to be here Monday. It's optional. And if you're like, you know, I do have one of these gold booths and I know it's not going to take me that long, but I still want to come Monday. You are more than welcome to do that. Um, it's just not mandatory. Right. So it's optional on Monday. We really call this out as you're starting to think about booking travel. Right. I know a lot of people ask like, when do I need to get there? Some people will advance it, right? They'll send their events and their marketing teams before the rest of the team comes. So this should help you do that. These, these will be your times to follow for those purposes of flights and travels and hotels. But yeah, majority of you will likely end up loading in on Tuesday morning and finding that to be plenty of time. And then the sponsor hall is open on Tuesday for hours. So it is quite a bit of time. It's pretty much a full day by the time, you know, you get here, load in and immediately start talking to attendees, it becomes a whirlwind of a day. It's a little bit of a blur. But yeah, It'll be open from 1 to 7. So just something to bear in mind there, Wednesday we're open all day. I know it's a long day, but yeah, it is open 7 to 7 and then the last day it's open from 7:30 to 6 so you can sleep in for 30 minutes. And then from 6 to 9 we do move out. So same thing here on travel, like if you know you want to send some folks home early on the last day, I know a lot of teams where they're like, you know, I'm going to send some of my sales or my execs home by the time it's like 2pm or something on Thursday. And some of us will do the move out or maybe we'll swap if some of us do the move in and some of us do the move out. So we're not, you know, double bookending really long hours after. But yeah, this is more so to help you guys book your travels and just be aware again with the last one, just things to be aware of and start thinking about as you're going into being a sponsor for this year's annual. We already talked about our audience so I'll skip that. Just a few things of what's new and then again we don't want to overload you guys on the first webinar so we're trying to keep it. I will say too, I know last year some of the feedback and like the post sponsor survey was at these webinars for too long. We're going to try and keep them a bit more succinct every week when we do them and then obviously open it up for Q and A at the end if there's any questions. But yeah, so try to be mindful of that as well. Try not to do, you know, more than 20 or 30 minutes of content. Sometimes they do go long if it's something like, you know, boot dimensions and we're explaining them. But yeah, we'll try and keep these to maybe shorter bits of content, 25 to 30 minutes and then open up for Q and A so you guys can ask what you need to as well. So I'll just wrap on what's new. We could do any questions if there's any more in the chat. I know it's early days. Saster AI Summit. I want to talk about this really quickly for a variety of reasons. One being that last year was really the first year we added a full blown AI Summit and stages within SAS re annual. Obviously this year, not only is it like Table stakes, as some people say. I'm like, it's just part of it now, right? We are doing this AI Summit as part of it. I don't see it going away. Again, more exciting announcements about AI coming next week and what we're doing around that. We're actually adding a third stage and that's all I'll say about that. But yeah, so we ended up having AI Summit last year. Most of the AI content was on the middle day because we tried to make it its own summit. And now honestly the AI content is all three days. It's all three days. We're adding a third stage. So yeah, it's super exciting. I think from the perspective of who we've seen sign up, who the speakers are that are leaders in AI, what you guys are all doing in AI has been really exciting. We just did digital AI day that a ton of people came to. Probably the equivalent of people who come to SAS RE Annual.

There's a lot of people there. I was big numbers. If it's any sign of things to.

Come, I was like really good. Lots of lots. So yeah, no pressure for us to deliver on all the top tier speakers that are in AI and SaaS and Cloud. But no, I think it's exciting. Right? There's so much that's going to come out from this. There's so many tools we're even using that are AI based tools. Again, exciting times, I think. Again, just something to know in the back of your mind. It's just full ingrained now into sastry Annual. I know a lot of your presentations, when you're starting to think about it, will likely incorporate AI. You do not have to. Right. I think that's a question we're starting to see more often now. Is like, okay, I, you know, I have maybe a More so traditional SaaS product doesn't have an AI later. That's. That's totally fine. Like that's not something you have to be like embarrassed about. A lot of you are crushing it without that. Right. So just know like you'll see different things in our branding for things like this. Where you see it's I call it the dark mode or the dark side but it's our AI branding. It's a little bit more neon and dark and then like, you know, our usual cloud branding is like light and colorful but you'll see that sprinkled throughout. So if you get, you know, speaker cards and you want AI version because your speaker's talking about AI, we can certainly help you do that again. Just certain, just something you can either lean into on. How we do our branding is, you know, neon and AI for all the AI stuff and then, you know, bright clouds for everything that is SASS and Cloud in Blue. So yeah, there's that. The other things we're doing is we're bringing the summits back, but we're making them both bigger and also more exclusive. So I'm like, how do I say this nicely? You guys might not have known this. I think this is something that really came out in the post event debrief, if you've had the chance to watch that. If not, no worries. But we basically did these four summits last year in an area of the campus that had its own entrance, it was gated, it has its own like entry point and had its own basically AV setup. It had its own little world. It was, we call it like an event within the event. So there were these four events within the event. Throughout the four of them there was about, you know, 1500 people who went to them and we loved it and it was great. But we were also like. It also took 1500 people out of like the core of SAS re annual. And so what we're doing this year is we're making them bigger by moving them into one of our hangars so that if you do get to go to one of these summits, one, it's more accessible, two, they're still going to be gated, so it's still going to be access controlled. You do have to be either invited or accepted to one of these summits. But there will be content at the end of each of these summits is our goal that is open to any attendee. So you'll be able to go to those and kind of get a feel for how the summits operate. I know some of you are sponsors of our summits for the first time, which is super cool. But it's also, I think, a way for you guys to know that there is this pool of 1200-1500 people at Saster that were last year kind of hidden in a building. And this year will not be like hidden. There'll be a little bit more VIP and roped off, but you will be able to see them. So I think that'll help too because I know some folks were like, oh, there were another whole subset of people I didn't even see. And so now they'll be more so in the core of sas, Randall, which I think is cool. And so, yeah, there's a few of these we do. So the CFO Summit. It takes place the first day. You can probably judge by the name. It is the Chief Finance Officer Summit at sas. Ranul, going back through my records, I think this is the third time we've done a CFO summit. If you have a CFO that wants to come to this, you guys can go and I'll show you in a second where it lives on SAS Annual. All these are in our networking tab. And so as a sponsor, you can 100% send your executives to the summits. They do need to apply, though. It's not by default. Like, if you're a sponsor, then by default your CFO can get in. You do have to take the five minutes it takes to apply either on behalf of your CFO or have your CFO apply to the summit or any of the summits. Right. So just something to be mindful there. Wednesday we have two summits. So there's the CRO and CEO summit, which is expanding. Last year, you might remember, we did this as poker night. We're expanding it this year. So we're still doing poker night because I feel like people would come get me if I remove the poker, because they were playing poker for a very long time last time. So we're still doing the poker element of it, but we are adding some content, just pre poker, like two sessions for people to sit through and learn and then go to poker night. And then we extended poker night because last year poker night went all the way through the big party. And I, I was like, I'm just not going to fight gravity this year. So that's poker night. So again, if you, if your CEO is coming or planning on attending, this one is hyperlinked. You guys can sign up here and I'll show you where they're linked. So if you go to sasanual.com in this handy networking tab, you'll see all these summits live here and you can start to apply for your execs or have your execs apply if you're like, do I really need to do that in February? No. But you know, it doesn't help or it doesn't hurt to have them, you know, apply now and, and get into these summits. So there's that. But yeah, we'll also remind you guys as the weeks go on to have your exact supply for these summits. But yeah, CRO and CEO Summit still includes poker night. Still going to be a ton of fun. It's on Wednesday. CCO summit actually moved days. So last year, this was the last day. This Year, it's the middle day. So this will be our second CCO summit. So if you have a chief customer officer, this is definitely the place for them to go. This one already has a ton of speakers. I think their speakers are full at this point too. And I know they were just kicking this off yesterday at the SF Customer Success Meetup. So this will be well attended. It's a mix of folks who are in that community, plus the leaders that, you know, John, between John Gleason and Sasser we bring together that are leaders in cs. I know this one has a sponsor and, and also has a few outstanding kind of interests and sponsorship. So probably a few slots left for cfo, CRO and cco. And then the one that's pretty much full is CMO Summit. So this is our third CMO summit. We did one last year and then we did one two years ago. Like we skipped one year. But yeah, so this is the third CMO summit. I'm excited because we have a lot of really great partners. So G2 Google Cloud, demand based. I know we're trying to sneak one more in if we can, but between their network and ours, we expect this one to be maybe full sooner rather than later. So again, doesn't hurt to submit your CMO now if you want your CMO to get a spot to the summit. Because they do fill.

I think it's good advice for all of them. Yeah. Because they, they. Last year they all filled up.

So they all filled up.

You know, if you can, if you want to send your execs, your cmo, your cfo, definitely submit them or follow up with, with me or Amelia if you have any questions.

Yeah, either way. And if you're like, okay, how will I know if they get in? Like, we will let them know. Hopefully they'll let you know. Or if you submit on their behalf, we'll let you know. And then, yeah, as a sponsor. Right there's. So typically, I'll just explain. For any of the summits that we have, typically the revenue, there is a revenue requirement and stage requirement for executives who are coming to summit. Now the asterisk exception to that is yes, if you are a sponsor of ours and your CMO is coming and they are the actual cmo. Right. Like we're a little strict. Like it has to be the CMO and not your VP of Demand gen. But if you do have a CMO at your stage or you have a CRO, you know, apply them for the summit even if you're not at that hundred million dollar revenue cliff that we typically enforce because as a sponsor, this is kind of like your way in to network with these folks. And we obviously know who all the sponsors are, so we typically will grant them access even if they don't meet those requirements. Just based on the fact that you guys are sponsors and are participating in the annual. And I will say you don't send your execs to all the summits. Like, if you're like, oh, I don't have a cmo, but I have a CRO or oh, we don't have a cfo, we really just have a VFA Finance, but I've got a cco. I wouldn't sweat it. I wouldn't. Again, I wouldn't try and like end too many rules to try and get your, you know, promote on the fly. So they have the title to get into one of the summits. Like they are cool. But I think if you, if they, I think if you can at least get your execs or one of your execs to go to one of them, you'd honestly be super covered. They're so great. You know, each of them have about 300 to 400 attendees that are, you know, average attendees at 100 million up. So there's a lot of public companies that came last year that are coming this year again, folks who have scaled to a hundred million plus. So yeah, a lot of really great folks to be in the room with. But I wouldn't feel pressured, especially not in February to try and get your execs to go to all of them. It's, you know, if you've got execs in these areas and they'd be, they would benefit from it. It's something again to start looking through now if, if scheduling works out for them because these summits are on particular days within the annual. That's something I would just have a conversation with them about. Like, hey, they've got the CMO summit on the last day. Can you come to Saster on the last day? Right. Like they can come to the booth, they can go to the summit, they can do networking and basically come for a day and then leave the rest of the team to doing your guys's presence in the booth the other like full three days. So just some food for thought and advice there of something to start thinking about. Last two things I'll just tease out, as David mentioned. So every year we do this thing called customer passes. I'll bring it up because again, we've got a lot of new folks and folks who are, I know based as well on the feedback from the post exec debrief last year that not everybody used their customer passes. And I think it's because we started the rollout fairly late of it. Even though it's something we do every year, you know, we just. I don't know, I think I just assumed it'd be a little bit easier for people to invite their customers. But I get the schedules are really crazy. It would, it would seem like everyone is like really busy now. So yeah, I think again, something to start thinking about if you're, you know, super gold platinum diamond, that each of these levels comes with customer passes, you'll be able to start like nominating your customers again in March. So sooner rather than later doesn't mean you have to do it. You have all the way until April to do it. But it just means if you want to get started on that now and start thinking about who to invite or tease this out to your sales team if you got, you know, a meeting up coming with their sales team in the next couple of weeks, just something to tease out with them. That or your CS team or whoever owns renewals at your company. I know it's so different these days, but whoever owns renewals and customers, talk to them about this. We did end up taking more than 300 people last year that were customers of our sponsors. So again, it is something I know. We also got feedback that it wasn't really tracked by each of our sponsors. So something we're trying to just seed a little bit sooner to really take advantage of and use to your advantage to bring these customers. Right. If they're accepted as a nominee of using one of your customer passes, they do get a full ticket to SaaSR. I'm like, those things are 1500 bucks by the time it's may. Like if that is real value. Like if someone gave me a fifteen hundred dollars ticket to Coachell, I'd be very excited, right? I'd be like, oh my God, that's amazing. Yeah, something to start thinking about now so they can also book their travel and think about if they can come and see you on site. And honestly, I know a lot of customers have been super grateful to the sponsors when they are able to take advantage of these passes.

So again, definitely recommended. Yeah, awesome way to just wrap your arms kind of around your customers, connect it with, with your saster experience. And yeah, some people use it as a way to like get some, you know, even ROI pretty quickly from the event by bringing top bottom of funnel Pipeline to the event or a customer. So it's a great opportunity to take advantage of.

Yeah, it's a great call out. We'll talk a lot more about customer passes but yeah, it's something where they don't have to be an active customer. A lot of people do use it for active customers but you can also use it, as David mentioned, for prospects. Typically if they're later stage again this can be something to help get them over the line so you close the deal. It's after it's a win win. So yeah, something to start thinking through there. The last thing I'll tease out. We did this last year as a new program and so we will be expanding what we call their who do you want to meet program in 2025 which is super exciting. This is something we've been actively working on since September which maybe hasn't been that long, but we have usually when it's September to September, I'm like we've been working on this all year. Like we've just been working really, really fast to expand this program given our time frames of back to back masters. But basically what this program was, if you got to take advantage of it last year is it was open to super gold and up sponsors as an opt in. Again it wasn't mandatory. It's still never mandatory. It's just we think you would benefit from this program. So we reach out to all current and recent attendees basically you know, the three weeks before semester. So it is a little bit late but it's to maximize. Right. Like most attendees you have to realize sign up in the last month for the event. Most of them are not signing up early except for apparently this year. But it's still, you know, that hockey stick of okay, people right before the event are going to sign up for the event because they realized oh shoot, I need to get my ticket to Saster. So we do it right before the event to kind of maximize how many people you would get as an opt in lead. We basically went out to these people and we said hey do you want to meet with the, you know, whatever CMO of Drata, the VP of marketing at Google, the VP of marketing upfront, IBM, et cetera. And then we generated opt in leads for all of these sponsors and we gave the sponsors those leads. I'm going to be honest here, like the couple days before the annual started again, it's to maximize the amount of leads you can get. So it is a lot of work like in the immediate run up to the annual, but you will get this list of, you know, opt in leads. I think what we're going to do this year is with everything we're doing is push that timeline up to try and maximize your leads and your meetings before you get there so you don't feel like you're panicked. But again you're always going to have people who sign up for meeting you and often meeting you last minute. But it's something to know, right? Some of these people got between I think 10 on the low end to 124 on the high end. Like you could probably do 10 meetings in three days. 124 would be a lot of meetings to do in three days. So you know, it does require some qualifications. But these are all attendees that are opting in and raising their hand and saying yes, I want to meet with you and the company. So it's something again we're expanding on in 2025. Nothing for you to do on this. It's something Sasser does on your behalf. We'll basically reach out to you a few, you know, the weeks in, in April, like mid April, ask you, you know, who do you want to be basically the face of this program on your end? By default we use a lot of people's speakers because a lot of people do want to meet your speakers. So that is a hack. We do recommend you use your speaker and then we again we'll start to solicit opt ins. We send them to you and then you reach out to them for meetings. Right? You do your qualification just like anything else. You can consider it. A lot of people treat this as like an inbound lead almost. So you treat it as that right to your normal qualifications of process and then book as many meetings as you can on site. Some people will do it with the actual person that was the face of their opt in program. Some will do it like different tiers again based on your qualifications. But since we are going to move this up in the timelines again something to just half of the back of your mind, start thinking about if you're a super golden app sponsor, if you want to participate in this, who you might use for this program. We do recommend again using your speaker or maybe making sure you pick your speaker who can do this too. That's something we'll talk about in our speaker guidelines because it does maximize the amount of meetings you can have on site. And if you're like, oh, I'm a gold, how do I get access to this? It is super cold enough. So if you're gold and let's say David is like your, your, your person. It's Astor. Talk to David about, you know, how can we get you to super gold so you can get in to this program. Now if you are a gold and you're like, I don't have budget for me, there will be other things you can do to, you know, maximize your networking and meetings on site. But this is just a bonus lead gen program we do for super gold and up to be mindful of. I know not everybody knows about it because we did it super last minute last year but saw some good results that led us to improving it and doubling down on it for 2025. Lots of exciting stuff. Lots of exciting stuff.

It was a good test last year and I think we had some good. You know, as Amelia said, we learned from it and I think it should be even better this year. So it was good.

I'm excited. We're rolling it forward. We're kind of doing it the same way we did last year, but we're also again, rolling it forward so that you can try and also just network with people a little bit sooner as part of who do you want to meet? So who do you want to meet Is getting a major expansion. There's going to be really like two big components to it. There's going to be a new app that goes with who do you want to meet? So last year was strictly like opted in the agenda. There's also going to be an app functionality this year that you'll be able to use. So it'll be both. I'm like, we're doing not as long either or like we'll still do. We'll solicit leads for you and then you'll be able to go into the app and book meetings as well with attendees one on one. So it's exciting. I'm like we are blowing this out of the water compared to last time, making it more formal and so yeah, it's exciting for, for this year, I think again, just in the back of your mind, if you're thinking about nothing else in Feb for Saster, it's just start thinking about scheduling and your teams. I know that's one of the hardest things even for us of, you know, getting people schedules for speakers and vendors and attendees. Right. It's just getting it on the books is honestly the first major hurdle. So just something to think about, right, like who do you want to do, who will you want to participate and who do you want to meet from your end? Maybe see if your execs have the time to come to one of the summits, start thinking about, you know, putting placeholders for your team on their calendars for, you know, working the booth. Coming to Sastry annual, taking the time to do other things at Saster. Because there's going to be a lot going on this year. Right. It's always jam packed, but I think even more so this year between the summits, the who do you want to meet program that'll be on. On. On times 100x like on acid. Basically. Like, there's going to be a lot to do. There's a lot of really great content. Right. So there's going to be a lot to do this time. So, yeah, just something to be aware of and mindful of. Obviously. Come and have fun. Other things you can start thinking about is some people do like coordinated outfits for Sasters. So if that's something you want to start thinking about, definitely something to start thinking about.

So never too soon to plan your wardrobe, right?

It's never too soon. I know. I'm always amazed when I see people with like full, branded, like, I don't know, coordinated outfits. I'm like, yeah, you, you have to order those like soonish.

Like the branded blazer, you know, that's always a cool one.

Yes. Branded blazers. We've seen branded blazers. We've seen branded tracksuits.

Yeah, Ties. Not a lot of ties. It's astro. But I've seen a branded.

We've seen them. Yeah, we've seen them. So, yeah, just something to start thinking about now. If you're like, oh, I've seen matching shoes. I don't know if you want to start anything about your wardrobe. Maybe that's our, our parting, our parting advice to you. That's the end of our kickoff for today. Hopefully this was helpful. Like I said, we'll be here Every Thursday at 9 from now until May. Sastry annual happens just with helpful updates for sponsors. I think we answered all the questions, but if you guys think of anything else, just email us. I'm Amelia at Sarank. David is David@Sastorink. You can also hit up events at SAS Drink. If you're like, this was TMI and I'm too sleepy for this. It's okay. You can watch it later or tune in next week if you missed it. But yeah, we're, we're, we're getting. We're.

Hey, Amelia, we got one last question here. Um, and it's when are the speakers group going to reach out? So for those that have speakers and I think it was on a slide.

It is. Yeah. So starting next week. So Flora, if you're, if you're the main PoC for speakers, just let us know. But yeah, they're going to start their communications next Monday. So again, that's why if we know your point of contact, cool. If we don't, we're just going to guess. No offense. So we'll just guess. And it's probably, you know, whoever the marketing person is either we worked with last time or who we are working with this time as like our main poc. We'll use you as the default for now until you tell us no, but we'll use you for now. And yeah, those will start next week again. So keep an eye out for those. It's something, you know, next Thursday. I'll also go over what they send out just in case you guys don't get it and you need to get on the distribution. But yeah, exciting things. We'll have a lot more announcements next week, which is great. Hopefully this is helpful. David, thanks for joining.

No problem. All right, Bye, everyone.

Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next Thursday.