SaaStr Insider Webinar: Announcing SaaStr Demo Day

Okay, cool. We're gonna get started. So. Hello everyone. Tuning in. We're back for another Saster Insider webinar that we do every Thursday at 9am I'm gonna make WH in here a co host.

I can't.

Oh, he's a co host. Hello. Cool. So we are going to kick off today's webinar. Yeah, cool. Here's Wayland Day. We have a very special topic we're gonna be talking about. Faster Demo Day. So let me try and go full screen here. Okay, cool. If you're new to this weekly series that we do on Thursday, I know a lot of people tune in on the live stream. We do these every Thursday at 9. Kind of an overview of what's new after a bit of behind the scenes on what to do for partners and ourselves and then. Yeah, and mainly events related. So today we're talking about something super exciting that we have just quietly been launching. But we'll kind of formally launch next week. But we've been talking to some partners about, so we wanted to chat. Demo day. Waylon, how excited are you for demo?

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

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

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

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

Yeah, absolutely. Quick path to executive alignment.

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

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

Yeah, I think that's a really great point. Right. Like you kind of, I know some companies, right. For most companies, I would say it's their, their start of Q1. You know, you're kind of wiping the slate clean in the new year. So this would be maybe a good chance to get a good amount of leads to get going. Right. Fall behind later. At least we started the year strong. Or if for some of those who do, you know, kind of the salesforce quarters, for those that it's the NFP4, maybe you need the extra leads to your enter your quota because yours actually ends in January. That's a, that could be a positive there too. But I think, I think more and more folks are saying that, you know, time is kind of of the essence due to get ahead on leads and, and product. And this is a really great way to do this. It's, it's, it's a big reason of why we pitched January specifically to do a demo day. Right. We've, we've been having daily meetings with partners and sponsors between Waylon, the rest of our sales team, our you know, production and events team. Like this is something that folks have been seemingly asking for. Right. Is like I just need leads in the new year. Like I'm you know, my quota rolls over aren't delivering. So. So yeah, this might be a good way to help do that. Cool. We've talked about our audience a lot but if you haven't seen it before, if you haven't been to one of our digital events, this is more specific to our digital event community audience. Right. Again a lot of CEOs and founders Wayland Point. You know a lot of products, sales and marketing go to go to go to market folks as well as we have seen more across our digital and in person events. More CTOs, CXOs, etc. Right. And I think that just goes to the buying committee is just getting a lot bigger on everything. Well a good spread here of decision makers. You know we do as we mentioned, we do have a higher sort of audience engagement I think than maybe virtual events. If you have that in your mind. If you're unfamiliar with our digital events, not that it's the same but I would recommend going to our next workshop Wednesday. On Wednesday it'll give you a good flavor for what our digital events are like. But you'll see in our workshop Wednesdays where you can even watch one on, on the, on our YouTube channel we have them all linked there. You'll see high audience engagement. Like we they're an hour but we really only do 20 minutes of content and then it's literally we go the full. We always have the full hour and like people will do Q and a for 40 minutes sometimes a little over the top of the hour. And that is all organic. Right. These are just folks from the Saster community turning in. None of tuning in. None of that is like preceded. We're not like hey will you come to workshop Wednesday and ask some questions? Well pure like actual engagement and I think it's been great because we've seen in the last couple weeks Too like more CEOs more like prior staffers doing workshop Wednesdays. So yeah if you haven't had the chance that'll give you a good flavor for what our like full day digital bands are like. There are a fair mix of really great companies that come and there are some companies that don't miss you know a. So yeah I think we've hit that one. But just a good reference there and then. Yeah this is to my point like in the how the in agenda placement work so on you know, faster demo day once the agenda is live next week at the first launch. This is how it will work where like you know your, your topic will be literally in the in agenda and that's how folks sign up for your session. They are required to at least pick one session. So you know, anyone that's lining up for the event is at least picking one session which makes it good because you know they're, they're kind of opted in. We send like G calendar reminders, all that kind of stuff to help with the organic opt ins on the day of and kind of like that audience interaction and then we do as on our back end team, you know, try and aggregate some of the questions that do come in through streaming and try and hit those as well. So again wide audience, global audience, a lot of decision makers and then you do get the video delivery as well. Right. So if it's something where you know your executive can take the time to do demo day then you also have this asset now handy right where you've got like a live demo, you have interactions with disaster community. It'll give you a good sense of what people are asking maybe they want to see. Could be also good for like your CPO if they want real time feedback from. It was a good way to do it live and yeah it is 100 live. So none of this is prerecorded. We do with our like our previous digital events share these long tail on Sasters. So you can see here some of the screenshots of like you know we promoted on our YouTube, we promoted on our live stream and we've had you know again kind of crazy amount of viewers watch these in the past. It really depends on you know, speaker. If you have a C suite obviously there's usually a higher and and more of an audience there and then yeah so, so yeah it's usually on the day of There's a fair amount of views that you'll get as well. We did link some opt in engagement here. So again if you're thinking of, of if you want to participate in demo day just let us know. We do have these examples kind of handy so you can see the amount of like views that they all got from. These are real views from past digital events as well as the examples. But again you can kind of see how folks talk about their content to Saster's audience. So yeah, last but not least it's kind of like what's included if you do sponsor. We've already hit this but just as a recap it is like a live 15 minute demo with Q and A. It's that live video and social distribution promoted to Saster community. You know, pre during and then post event you do get that dedicated lead capture. So on average we would say that's between 100 to 300. That could be more, that could be less. That's just an average range. Right. Of what you can expect to get. Again, time to leave value super important there. That's why there is more of a wider range as well. And you do get that dedicated like post event video delivery so you can have that asset to use and post event promotions across faster. Anything else on demo day here, Rayla?

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can reach me on LinkedIn, Waylon McGill, or at Whenaster Inc dot com.

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

Thanks everyone.

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