SaaStr Europa returns to Paris for the second year in a row. Taking place on Wednesday, June 12 and Thursday, June 13 at Maison de la Mutualité, it’s one of the only conferences in Europe where you can hear directly from SaaS founders and executives and learn from their playbooks.
There are over 60 speakers to choose from over the course of the conference. Deciding who to hear from is bound to be tricky, but we think the following 15 speakers should be at the top of your list.
Christina Bechhold Russ, Director of Samsung NEXT Ventures
Christina Bechhold Russ is the head of the UK division of Samsung NEXT Ventures, an early-stage software and services fund. She is also the cofounder of Empire Angels, a New York and London-based angel fund that supports young entrepreneurs.
Bechhold Russ has a personal interest in mobile and enterprise SaaS, which makes her the ideal person to discuss “5 Things That Are Different In Monetizing Mobile SaaS” with Beekeeper’s Christian Grossman on Thursday, June 13 at 2 p.m.
Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel
Philippe Botteri is a partner at venture capital firm Accel and has more than 20 years experience in the Silicon Valley and European tech ecosystems. Most recently, he has led Accel’s investments into DocuSign, Doctolib, Blablacar and Chainalysis. Botteri is also on Fiverr’s board and advises CrowdStrike.
Botteri will be speaking with Doctolib’s Agnes Bazin about “The Secret to SMB Sales” on Thursday, June 13 at 4:15 p.m.
Hande Cilingir, Cofounder and CEO of Insider
Hande Cilingir is the cofounder and CEO of Insider, the first integrated growth management platform for digital marketers that helps digital markets drive growth across the entire funnel. Previously, she cofounded, managed and sold English & More International Learning Centre.
Cilingir will be speaking alongside executives from ScaleX and Atlassian on Wednesday, June 12 at 4:15 p.m. about “Hiring, Firing and Stretching: How to Build Your First Management Teams.”
Dilek Dayinlarli, Founder and Managing Partner of ScaleX
Dilek Dayinlarli is the founder and managing partner of ScaleX Ventures. Previously she was a VC at 212 and a director of strategy at Groupon. Dayinlarli has invested in a number of tech and SaaS companies, including IyziCo, MENA and Insider.
She will join Insider’s Hande Cilingir and Atlassian’s Berkay Mollamustafaoglu as moderator in the discussion “Hiring, Firing and Stretching: How to Build Your First Management Teams” on Wednesday, June 12 at 4:15 p.m.
Andrew Filev, Founder and CEO of Wrike
As a young software entrepreneur frustrated at the limitations of the workflow and collaboration tools available to him, Andrew Filev decided to create his own. In 2006, he created Wrike to focus on building out these tools. Wrike was completely bootstrapped until 2012 — and even then the company took on just $1 million in funding.
Filev discusses what he learned from those early days of Wrike on Thursday, June 13 at 10 a.m. in a talk titled “5 Dos and Don’ts Lessons From My Bootstrapping Days with Wrike.”
Christoph Janz, Managing Partner of Point Nine
Christoph Janz is a SaaS founder turned investor. In 1997, he cofounded Deal Pilot, which was acquired by Shopping.com, and in 2005 he cofounded Pageflakes, which was acquired by LiveUniverse. He became an angel investor in 2008, investing in Zendesk, FreeAgent and Typeform. In 2011, he cofounded Point Nine Capital, a Berlin-based venture capital firm, where he works as a partner investing in SaaS companies and online marketplaces.
On Thursday, June 13 at 2 p.m., Janz will be joined by Typeform’s Joaquim Lecha to discuss what it’s like to offer “Freemium at Scale.”
Anna Khan, Vice President of Bessemer Venture Partners
Anna Khan is a vice president at the venture capital firm Bessemer and one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. Khan is a cloud computing expert and has co-authored the last three annual State of the Cloud Reports for Bessemer.
If your business is focused on the cloud, you can’t miss her talk with Bessemer’s Alex Ferrara on the “State of the Cloud 2019: Europa Edition” at 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 13.
Christian Lanng, Cofounder and CEO of Tradeshift
Christian Lanng is the cofounder and CEO of Tradeshift, the world’s largest business commerce company connecting over 1.5 million companies in 190 countries. Lanng started his first software company aged 19 and built one of the world’s first mobile browsers. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software & Society
You can hear Lanng talk about “The Rules You Can Break, The Ones You Can’t” with Notion’s Jos White at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12.
Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr
Jason Lemkin is the founder and CEO of SaaStr and founder and former CEO of EchoSign, which he sold to Adobe in 2011. Since then he has helped build the world’s largest business SaaS community and invests in other SaaS startups through the $90m SaaStr fund. BusinessInsider named him one of “The 32 Most Powerful People in Business Technology.”
Lemkin sits down with Talkdesk founder and CEO Tiago Paiva to discuss what it looks like to go “From Hackathon to Unicorn” on Wednesday, June 12 at 1 p.m.
Leighanne Levensaler, Ventures Managing Director & SVP of Workday
Leighanne Levensaler wears two hats at Workday. She is simultaneously the senior vice president of corporate strategy — where she leads the team that creates integrated business strategies — and the managing director and co-head of Workday Ventures, where she leads the team’s investments in emerging enterprise tech.
You can hear her discuss her experiences of the latter in her talk “10 Things That Aren’t Obvious About Partnering with Big Companies” on Thursday, June 13 at 2:45 p.m.
Tiago Paiva, Cofounder and CEO of Talkdesk
Tiago Paiva is the cofounder and CEO of Talkdesk, a cloud-based contact center software provider. The company started in 2011 when Paiva and Cristina Fonseca noticed how outdated most call center software was. They build the first version of Talkdesk in 10 days at a hackathon hosted by Twilio and were later selected to join 500 Startup. By the end of 2018, Talkdesk was valued at over $1 billion.
Paiva joins SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin on Wednesday, June 12 at 1 p.m. to talk about his experiences of taking Talkdesk “From Hackathon to Unicorn” valuation.
Doug Pepper, Managing Director of Shasta Ventures
Doug Pepper is the managing director of Shasta Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that has invested in Canva, Mint, Nest and Nextdoor among other software and internet companies. In his previous role as general partner at InterWest, Peppers was the first investor in Marketo.
Despite his success at InterWest, it took two years to fund his own company. You can find out why it took so long in his talk on Thursday, June 13 at 10:45 a.m.
Eric Rea, Cofounder and CEO of Podium
Eric Rea is the cofounder and CEO of Podium, a customer engagement software company based in Provo, Utah. He founded the company in 2014 and in five years has grown the business from five employees to 500.
Part of Podium’s growth is a result of venture capital investment that the company was able to gain despite being located hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley. Rea will talk about what it was like in his session “Scaling Outside Silicon Valley: Going from $0 to $60M ARR in 4 Years” on Wednesday, June 12 at 3:30 p.m.
Josh Stein, Partner at Threshold Ventures
Josh Stein is a partner at Threshold Ventures, an early-stage investment fund, and advisor to a huge range of startups, including Talkdesk, AngelList, LendKey and Lumity.
It’s fair to say Stein knows a thing or two about growing and scaling SaaS brands. Which is why he’s the perfect person to talk about “How to Lie (to Yourself) with SaaS Statistics”. He’ll be speaking at 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 13.
Jos White, General Partner at Notion
Entrepreneur turned investor Jos White is a general partner at Notion VC, a venture firm that focuses on SaaS enterprises across Europe. In 2000, White and his brother built MessageLabs, which was one of the world’s first SaaS companies. Together they grew the company into a $150m ARR business that was eventually acquired by Symantec for $700m in 2008.
You are lucky enough to be able to hear White twice at SaaStr Europa. First, he’ll be speaking with Tradeshift’s Christian Laang on “The Rules You Can Break, The Ones You Can’t with Tradeshift” on Wednesday, June 12 at 4:15 p.m. and on Thursday, June 13 at 2:45 p.m. with Notion’s Maddy Cross in a session called “Building high performance teams and hiring gamechangers.”
This year is also the first time that the Epic Presence team will be attending the conference. Drop us a line if you’re heading to Paris, too!
Images by: kasto/©123RF.com, The Climate Reality Project, Jonny McLaren
Since then my team and I have published over 2,500 long-form articles for SaaS and HR Technology companies all over the world and engaged with over 20K influencers to promote this content.
I’d be happy to chat with you about anything and everything we have learned along that journey. Please don’t hesitate to reach out!
- Conference Preview: 13 Talks We’re Excited for at UNLEASH America - March 21, 2023
- 3 Pain Points HR Leaders Will Look to Solve in 2023 - January 10, 2023
- How long does it take B2B SaaS buyers to make a decision? - July 19, 2022