SaaS gets its moment in the spotlight in two weeks, from February 5-7, 2019, at SaaStr Annual 2019. The conference takes place in San Jose, and it features over 300 of the brightest minds in SaaS today.
We’re so excited about this year’s lineup of founders, entrepreneurs and executives that we couldn’t fit all our favorites into a single list. Here are 14 more must-see speakers at SaaStr 2019.
Aaron Ross, co-CEO of Predictable Revenue, Inc.
In addition to running Predictable Revenue, Inc., Aaron Ross is the author of “From Impossible to Inevitable” and “Predictable Revenue”, the latter touted as the “sales bible of Silicon Valley.” He also helps SaaS companies turn outbound sales challenges into opportunities, while keeping to a 25-hour workweek.
Have questions? Ross hosts an Ask Me Anything session on Thursday, February 7, starting at 10:05 a.m.
Allison Wood, CEO of Camera IQ
Camera IQ is the first AR platform for deploying camera experiences at scale, which means that CEO Allison Wood and her partner Sonia Tsao had to create a market for their vision in addition to developing the software and service capabilities. “Camera marketing hasn’t existed before now,” Wood says. “When we were first fundraising, people would say ‘we’ve never thought about a camera-first future.’”
Learning to communicate your vision is as important as finding a vision worth pursuing. Wood discusses “Pros & Cons of Replacing Incumbent Vendors Versus Creating a New Market” on Thursday, February 7 at 1:30 p.m.
Ashley Brucker Stepien, VP Demand Marketing at Pendo.io
Scaling (whether marketing teams, practices or growth) is a fundamental skill in Ashley Brucker Stepien’s toolkit. A leader of the professional services team responsible for transformational marketing automation deployments at Marketo, Brucker Stepien later joined Appirio, building the company’s marketing cloud practice before becoming Vice President of Marketing. Currently, she focuses on demand generation and sales alignment at Pendo.
Brucker Stepien provides advice on “Building a More Diverse Workforce: Scaling Outside the Bay Area” on Tuesday, February 5 at 2:15 p.m.
Bill Clerico, CEO & Cofounder of WePay
“WePay came about because two friends couldn’t find a modern solution to help them split the cost of a ski house rental,” the company’s website explains. Those two friends, Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman, founded WePay in 2008 in order to spearhead the rise of secure peer to peer financial transactions. In 2017, the company was acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
Clerico talks about his journey on Thursday, February 7 at 1:30 p.m. in a session titled “WePay: How to Acquire at World-Class $400B Company.”
Christelle Flahaux, CMO of Host Analytics
Christelle Flahaux brings over 17 years of marketing experience to SaaStr 2019. She has served as the vice president of customer field marketing at Domo and has lent her experience to projects at companies including Ariba, Taleo and Marketo. In 2017, Flahaux joined Host Analytics, where she drives the company’s go-to-market strategy and works collaboratively with its regional teams to develop creative sales and marketing programs.
With so much experience across a broad field of companies, Flahaux is sure to bring a perspective worth listening to. We can’t wait to hear what she has to say.
Christian Lanng, CEO and Cofounder of Tradeshift
Christian Lanng has been starting technology companies since he was 19 years old. He has also served as the youngest-ever Head of Division in the Danish government’s National IT and Telecom Agency. Currently, Lanng leads Tradeshift, which works with Fortune 5000 companies to transform their business through the tools provided by Tradeshift’s platform.
On Thursday, February 7 at 1:30 p.m., Lanng discusses “How Founders Can Take Control of Their Destiny” — a must-know topic for any entrepreneur.
Dannie Herzberg, Head of Mid-Market Sales for Slack
Slack’s Dannie Herzberg oversees mid-market and BDR sales organizations for the company throughout North America. Before joining Slack, Herzberg spent five years helping HubSpot grow from 100 to 1200 employees and launch its IPO.
On Tuesday, February 5 at 10:00 a.m., Herzberg discusses how she and her colleagues went “From Freemium to Enterprise With Slack.”
Deon Nicholas, Founder of Forethought
“I am an outlier,” Deon Nicholas declares. “So naturally, I think about how to generate more outliers.” A two-time world finalist at the International Collegiate Programming Competition, former hacker at Facebook, Palantir, Dropbox and Pure Storage, and current head of Forethought, Nicholas has risen to stardom on a combination of talent, grit, and opportunity — the same factors that drive so many entrepreneurs’ success.
Nicholas discusses “How I Won TechCrunch Battlefield and What Happened After” on Thursday, February 7 at 2:30 p.m.
Henry Ward, CEO and Founder of Carta
Carta emerged in 2012 as a software platform for founders, investors and employees to manage their equity and ownership. Since then, Carta has helped manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity for companies such as Slack, Coinbase, and August Capital. Before launching Carta, Henry Ward founded Secondsight, a portfolio optimization platform for retail investors, and also helped lead companies like Reddwerks Inc. and BetweenMarkets.
Ward shares his experience in a session titled “How to Raise a $42m Series C and Reinvent a Space” on Thursday, February 7 at 11:20 a.m.
Mathilde Collin, CEO and Cofounder of Front
Front seeks to reinvent the inbox, allowing people to accomplish more. CEO and cofounder Mathilde Collin divides her time between leading Front and mentoring entrepreneurs through All Raise’s Female Founders Office Hours and the Pioneer Fund.
Collin has been recognized in Forbes’s 30 Under 30: Enterprise Tech 2017 and Inc’s Rising Stars 2018. We can’t wait to hear what she plans to share with us at SaaStr 2019.
Pat Poels, Senior VP of Platform at Eventbrite
Pat Poels currently serves as the senior vice president of platform at Eventbrite, where he leads a world-class, global engineering team. Yet many people are more familiar with his work as vice president of software development at Ticketmaster, where he wrote much of the reserved seating inventory system that Ticketmaster uses to this day.
Poels will speak on “Engineering Your Own Luck: The 3 Key Rules of Building Globally Distributed Teams” on Wednesday, February 6 at 3:10 p.m.
Robert Hohman, CEO and cofounder of Glassdoor
Since Glassdoor’s birth in 2007, the site has become one of the largest and fastest-growing job and recruiting sites in the world, thanks to the leadership of Robert Hohman. Hohman has also served as president of Hotwire, is one of the original team members at Expedia, and worked as a software developer at Microsoft in the Windows 95 era.
On Wednesday, February 6 at 9:35 a.m., Hohman will provide insight into his company’s success in a presentation titled “Glassdoor: The $1.2 Billion Story of Bringing Transparency to One of Life’s Most Important Decisions—Where to Work.”
Ruzwana Bashir, CEO of Peek
“What I went through growing up prepared me well for entrepreneurship,” Ruzwana Bashir told Fortune magazine in 2016. “I had to fight for a lot of things and I developed a grit that has really paid off.” It’s certainly paid off in the creation of Peek. Launched in 2011, Peek’s goal is to make it easy to book tours and activities anywhere in the world.
On Wednesday, February 6 at 1:40 p.m., Ruzwana Bashir is scheduled to share her wisdom with SaaStr audiences. We can’t wait to see where she focuses her remarks.
Weiping Peng, Software Architect at Salesforce
Salesforce has taken the SaaS world by storm, and it’s done so in part thanks to the skills of Weiping Peng, a software architect with over 20 years’ experience. Before joining Salesforce in 2010, Peng worked with Yahoo, building the company’s ad engine.
Learn more about SaaS from a developer’s perspective by attending her talk on Tuesday, February 5 at 10:30 a.m., titled “Building a Stellar Engineering Organization: Lessons from Databrix and Salesforce.”
Mallun Yen, COO and Cofounder of SaaStr
Finally, we can’t wait to hear from Mallun Yen, the Chief Operating Officer and cofounder of SaaStr. Yen focuses on helping companies launch novel products and services, turning vision into reality by leveraging data and technology to change behaviors and expectations.
Yen gives us two chances to learn from her experience. On Tuesday, February 5 at 3:30 p.m., she’s speaking on “Doing It Again, But With Happiness As a Mission: The Secrets of Zoom.” On Thursday, February 7 at 10:45 a.m., she covers “Operational Excellence: 10 Lessons from Scaling Stripe to $20b and Beyond.”
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