Things move fast… I said we would let you know immediately we know should plans change.
If you want to watch previous BoS Talks, you can access all of the publicly available ones from here, listed by year. The more recent talks will link to the video of the talk, a transcript, the speakers slides, any follow up online AMAs and attendee notes. Great talks on building SaaS and software businesses.
We hope you keep going, are staying safe and following the advice of your governments.
Due to the current global situation, you may be finding yourself having to find new ways of working: managing remote teams, video conferencing, providing wellbeing support for those struggling with change. and juggling day-to-day workload with all these new factors to deal with. There are no silver bullets that will solve all your problems, but here at BoS we have featured some useful talks from great speakers that may help you cope through some trying times.
Every year we welcome some of the cleverest industry leaders to the Business of Software conference and every year they leave with their brains full of new knowledge and a heap of new contacts in their rolodex (ah the old days before smartphones when you had to actually physically store someone’s details in hardcopy!)
With BoS Europe 2020 coming up in Cambridge on 23-24 March 2020, here’s a look at what you can expect to learn from our line up of speakers.
David Cancel is a 5x founder and 2x CEO with four successful exits to date. Currently, he’s co-founder and CEO of Drift, a startup that’s making it easier for businesses to talk to their customers. Previously, he was at HubSpot as Chief Product Officer after they acquired his company Performable.
In this (fireless) Fireside chat, we delve into what inspires and motivates David, how he came to start five different companies, and how he leads a high-growth company. Plus there are some great questions asked by the audience at the end that helps David open up about what he has done and what’s next.
Google famously published a leading reference for establishing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as a way to align teams and set short-term goals. In this BoSTalk, Whitney O’Banner (Engineering Manager, Medium) delves into which aspects of Google’s video should be embraced, which should be updated in line with the times, and which should be left in the ’90s.
Whitney leaves you with three ‘top tips’ for incorporating OKRs into your team, plus answers a few of the audiences hard-hitting question in the Q&A at the end of the talk.
This talk touches on how innovation can come from the bottom and that the upper hierarchy shouldn’t be so quick to shoot down ideas that come from grassroots. Marty Cagan (Founder, Silicon Valley Product Group and previous BoS speaker) recently published an article about OKRs which echos some of Whitney’s points about empowering teams and giving team objectives instead of individual objectives – BoS is often ahead of the curve – check out Marty’s post on svpg.com.
At Business of Software Conferences, we don’t run multiple speaking stages. Every attendee hears every talk at the conference – and that means that the conference lives (or dies) by the quality of the speakers. Our speaker selection process is rigorous, to ensure that we only put speakers on stage that we know will make the attendees think, and help them to build better software businesses.
That’s why, in addition to some exciting new speakers, we’re delighted to welcome back speakers who have already delivered brilliant talks at previous BoS Conferences. April Dunford, Jared Spool, Natalie Nagele, Vince Darley, Bruce McCarthy, Tom Adeyoola, and Stephen Allott will all be bringing new talks to BoS Europe 2020.
In anticipation of their return, we’re taking a look back at some of their previous talks. Read on below to find great talks about:
Rich Mironov gave a fantastic talk about Software Pricing at BoS Europe 2019. Yesterday, he joined Mark to answer questions from an audience both at our offices in Cambridge, and online.
Questions answered included:
With a background in chemistry and pharmacology and being an MIT MBA with a focus on finance and economics, Isa’s corporate career started at Pfizer where she was a chemist and data scientist before moving to JP Morgan Chase. Whilst VP, Digital Product & Strategy for Small Business at JP Morgan, Isa observed that the bank branches that were most profitable were ones with the most engaged people.
She took the leap into the world of entrepreneurship when she founded Squad in 2015 having seen an opportunity to help companies understand how to do this better but it was a huge career pivot that saw her leave corporate life to go it alone and pursue this.
She will talk about some of the ways that companies can provide a better environment for humans to work and share how she came to realise that in her startup, she had to bring her ‘best self’ to the business every day – no one else in the business has more impact on the morale and well-being of the team than the CEO.
4PM (GMT) // 11AM (ET) // 8AM (PT)
Software is intangible: it doesn’t have weight or size or per-unit manufacturing costs. But if we’re in the software business, we have to assign units and prices that reflect our value to customers. And we should be mapping out software pricing strategy before we start development, not the day before product launch.
In his BoS Europe 2019 talk, Rich Mironov – a 40 year Silicon Valley veteran – covers some software pricing essentials
• Computing (estimating) customer value
• Pricing units, or what we count and how we scale
• Segmentation, pricing/value tiers and how upsell works
This live Q&A will give you the chance to ask Rich directly some of the questions you have regarding software pricing and helping you to navigate through the darkness of packages and pricing structures.
You can spend as much as you want on developing a product, but no one cares how much you spend – they only care about it’s value. You can’t sell a product until it’s built and usable and the developers need paid to create the product, so how do software business make money if they are out of pocket before they even start? In this talk Rich gives you the key points to remember throughout your journey from startup to success.
Rich Mironov – a BoS conference regular having spoke about Product Roadmapping in 2018 and Software Economics in 2015 – is a seasoned executive and serial entrepreneur; having been CEO/VP Product at six startups. With roots in B2B infrastructure, SaaS and consumer online, Rich combines ‘what-we-can-build’ with ‘what-markets-want’.
