Going solo to a conference. The kindness of strangers.
Have you ever felt like the scruffiest person in the room?
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done this before. There’s always a new level where everyone else is better presented. More comfortable, etc.
From the moment I arrived at?SaaStr Europa ?it was very obvious that I was the newcomer. Bringing a literal orange carrier-bag with suncream definitely didn’t help!
DemoTime ?is great software. But it’s very new. No investors. It’s funded entirely from the modest profits from my other company.
It’s so bootstrapped that I wasn’t staying in the conference hotel or across the street like the other 2,600 attendees. My hotel was a 10 minute taxi-ride away up in the commercial district, for 90 euros/night. (Sidenote: Uber does not work well in Barcelona.)
And let me be clear — it was very obvious that I was nobody’s qualified prospect. I am scruffy at the best of times, and travelling hand-luggage-only took its toll on my non-ironed tshirt. (I had to roll them up to save space. There was no iron in my budget hotel.)
But this did not stop me from experiencing a huge wave of kindness, welcoming energy, and unrelenting enthusiasm from strangers.
From the very first moment I sat down & was welcomed by?GivePanel ?(a platform for charities to fundraise and build community) &?Pleo ?(cards for every employee for easy expense-management and reimbursals).
Simon and Lee from GivePanel. They were clearly better at this networking thing than I am. We had a great laugh. I would later meet the CEO (Nick) who gave me some great advice.
Maryana and Eoin were the first people I met from Pleo. These were pros. The kind of effortless networkers I immediately tried to emulate.
Or the?Hook ?beach party where I immediately bonded with their engineering team (an engineer & data-scientist. Respect to Hook for bringing their entire company — who all absolutely nailed the networking thing!) In a conference full of slick salespeople and effortlessly-comfortable extrovert execs, it was good to connect with some fellow engineers.
(Hook itself is a platform that connects customer success to bottom-line growth.)
Jake and I had an immediate bond from the shared-experience of being engineers suddenly pushed onto the front-line.
But the absolute highlight for me was connecting with the ContractBook team.
Firstly —?ContractBook ?is something that basically everyone needs. They take the pain out of managing contracts, improving consistency and workflow of the contract-negotiation process.
But more importantly (for me) they’re just good people. They invited me along for two very memorable evenings up in Barcelona’s hills, and were uncommonly welcoming. HUGE shout-out to TJ, Josh, Frank, Christian & the team.
Side-note: Christian is a very talented SDR, who gave credit early-and-often to Frank for mentoring him. They all gave each other so much props. This is exactly what a?best-in-class sales culture?looks like.
Great photo of everyone?except?the English bloke in the front-left ;).
This was a real, authentic Barcelona bar where the host — Juan — really brought things to life. If I had the capital I would offer him a career change into software sales!
There was so much respect in this team. This is what I want DemoTime to feel like culturally as we grow.
More than any other group, the ContractBook folks inspired the subtitle of this post “The kindness of strangers”.
A shout from across the room — “SAM…. SMITH!!!”
A special shoutout to Emma from?Plytix ?(a platform for centrally managing product information). Every time I walked anywhere near I’d hear a loud “SAM… SMITH!” (TLDR; the joke is that having the same name as the singer — people are always just slightly disappointed when it’s actually just me who shows up.)
Not just Emma. The whole Plytix team were deeply charming & ultra-welcoming.
The Plytix team. And Manish from Vent.io, seemingly trying to remain anonymous with the old backwards-badge trick!
What’s the ROI of attending/exhibiting at SaaStr?
The booths looked busy, and everyone I asked told me they were seeing a good return. If I could afford it I would get a booth at SaaStr. Unfortunately it’s completely out of reach.
At this stage in my company’s life, even attending was a non-trivial expense. (Not sure I should even admit this publicly.)
But believe me — you will see a DemoTime booth one day! I need to bootstrap my way there.
However the ROI on attending was clear for me. It paid for itself in prospective new business many-times-over. It also paid for itself in belief that this is a real, valid path.
I kept asking people if they had a demo-led sales process. If they did — almost everyone sees the value in using automatic highlights from the demo as the follow-up. This is huge for me.
Many people told me this was an obvious 10x improvement, or even pitched it back to me better than I explained it to them. (SaaS salespeople are extremely articulate).
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What did I get out of this conference?
Apart from a great time, I actually headed to SaaStr for something less obvious.
Yes. Sure — I wanted to meet potential customers (anyone who uses a demo-led sales process is an extremely qualified buyer, which is 90% of people I met).
But I also wanted to see that it’s possible. I wanted to meet people who’ve been down this path to show myself that this is a real, viable journey which real people have done.
I also received a tsunami of genuine, helpful advice from CEOs and people who have really trodden this path. Duncan at?Capsule , Rahil who’s just transitioning from a successful exit to founding Sakata Ventures, Nick the Founder-CEO of?GivePanel , Johannes from?Portagon , Mark and Jurgen from?Timewax , Arif from?Dolittle ?(pronounced “do little” — not to be confused with Deloitte), Amy from?Heap , Andrew from?Vizlib , Gerry from?Hornbill ?(enterprise customer service). The list goes on!
This was from the networking close out with Arif from Dolittle — who was very encouraging, and basically grilled me on how DemoTime is technically possible.
He really knows tech. Although this specific picture makes me laugh. :)
The fake-Irishman, the Englishman and the Split Beer
Sorry to David from?M3ter . (usage based pricing for SaaS). True to form I spilled a beer, which went directly onto his bag. He was cool about it. But still not a great moment for me.
Still they were kind enough to invite me to stay.
This is Maarten from?Peripass . An ultra-charismatic Belgian who somehow sounds exactly like he’s from Dublin. We traded some war stories. Me, David and Maarten had all managed to go a bit pink. At least it’s not just me!
Meeting some of the folks from Asana in a sky-bar with Contractbook. There are worse places to me!
Raising Capital?
My plan has been to fund DemoTime purely from the modest profits of my other startup. The logic goes: if I really believe in this, why would I use someone else’s money?
However — there were enough signs of Product Market Fit that I feel this might be a mistake. Maybe the correct strategy is to raise funds and really push the gas?
Fundraising sounds intimidating.
I don’t know the answer. I do know that if I was looking to raise — SaaStr is a great place to do it. I met some great VCs. Terry from?ZenDesk ?ventures was insightful (and just plain likeable). Alexey from?Cabra ?was another highlight. He was generous with his time and gave me a great pep-talk and advice.
Missed Opportunities?
I was hoping to meet?Jason Lemkin. ?He shook my hand when walking-by but was clearly (understandably) more interested in meeting the bigger businesses (I am about the smallest fish there is). I can’t blame the guy. I am sure he was mobbed constantly. He’s basically an A-list celeb at this event.
I also had one too many on the last night. (My bad. I was so into the conference vibe that I forgot to eat.)
Getting a booth also feels like a missed opportunity — but that’s just financially out of reach at this stage.
Let’s Remember What’s Important
Thank you to my loving partner Nicola for having both our girls (2 and 3) so I could attend.
Before heading to SaaStr Europa I did an extra day in Barcelona. I walked 4.4 miles that day. Spot the Englishman. I am the type of person who burns despite factor 50 suncream and being basically indoors.
The Sequel?
I might head to?SaaStr Annual . I definitely got a lot out of SaaStr Europa. But as pathetic as it sounds the ticket + flights are a significant cost to my young company. And it involves time away from my family — leaving Nic solo with both young girls. So that’s a decision for future me to work out.
If things go super-well it would be great to take my tiny-but-amazing 5 person team. But as-is I’m unsure if I can even invest the cost + time away for even myself (my girls are 2 and 3).
What is “DemoTime” Anyway?
In my other company, I can do a great demo, but my follow up sucks. (Great demo then a bunch of “just checking in…” emails.)
I found myself wanting to manually edit the recording to send the best-bits as follow-up & to help them sell internally.
Realizing that I couldn’t be the only person with this problem — I built DemoTime. It took longer then expected (video and AI are hard) but the highlights are now really good. The highlights are now 100% automated and 100% accurate.
So for every demo you do on Zoom/Teams etc., DemoTime will send:
There’s a fair bit of magic. Frankly you need to see the examples (and for that you should contact me!)
I have asked many people “would you ever?not?want to send highlights after the demo” — and basically everyone agrees that this is a 10x better way of following-up.
Hope that make sense.