With the theme share, scale, learn SaaStr Europa celebrated its come back to Europe from 7-8 June with 2700 founders, investors, and executives gathered at IBCC in the heart of Barcelona. I think we can conclude that just being there on-site and meeting in person with the big SaaS family again was one key takeaway itself.
- But talking about the content at the event I think we all can agree that the cloud-based economy isn't crumbling; VCs and stock exchange are. The investments in cloud technology, that fuels much of the SaaS industry are still increasing at a crazy rate. On top of that, the mega change in remote work and tools that came as an effect of Covid-19 will only continue forcing companies into newer technologies and mindsets. The globe is one market now! In the recent forecast, Gartner presented that global SaaS spend shows another 16% of growth in 2022, driven by more companies using SaaS for the first time and increased SaaS usage among companies that already use SaaS. And in our recent webinar How good Subscription Management will increase your revenue, Younium co-founder Martin Kåver covered this topic inspired by SaaStr Europe and SaaSiesta 2022 events. Take a look.
- Another great learning came from the diversity and inclusion session hosted by Simone Bartlett, Co-founder of Hugo a Future-of-Work company that enables high-performance remote client support teams in black communities. C-level diversity, a non-biased recruitment process and top fill with interim positions are a few of the tricks of how to become a more diverse workplace were covered in the keynote. You need people who are used to scaling and who can help you drive predictable results with experience. Also, people that are willing to move as you as founder can’t move every time the business enters a new market.
- Jon Perera, CMO at Highspot, talked about sales and marketing alignment. It is no secret that companies are still fighting to create complete sales and marketing togetherness, even though we all know it is so important. Or as Forrester research states: you will achieve 27% faster profit growth if you are successful with aligning sales and marketing efforts. Perera stated that starting with a clear definition of alignment is the first cornerstone. Alignment when scaling is one of the most challenging, but important tasks the leadership team faces in tech companies today. He also talked about narrative. Marketing spends hours on creating content and material that sales don’t use enough. I think all people in marketing sometimes feel that way. That is one super concrete thing where sales and marketing alignment isn’t working. Instead, you should create one common company narrative. Not only with input from marketing and sales, it should be aligned with the entire company from CEO to line staff. To make sure you have one single source of truth for the company narrative regardless of the form of content; from sales material to product video demos. The foundation needs to be clear and the same for everyone!
Younium team with SaaStr Founder Jason M. Lemkin at SaaStr Europe in Barcelona.
As one of the world's leading SaaS events, SaaStr strongly focuses on scaleups with the domination of growth-focused content. It was also inspiring to hear sessions on how to open new markets and scale your key SaaS metrics like ARR and it was great to attend an in-person event, network, and learn from other market scaleups.
