Laura Roeder, CEO, MeetEdgar

Almost everyone running a consulting, training or agency business, however successful, will admit at some point that they wish they could run a product business. Why don’t they?

Turns out it is quite hard – many of the skills required are complementary but stopping taking on paid clients to allow a team to build a product with no immediate prospect of return requires a brave and bold move. Laura decided to make the move a couple of years ago, while pregnant. Organically funded, the new business reached $100k MRR within a year and continues to grow – at $200k+ MRR when this talk was given. She shares some of her experiences changing her business and some of the things that have propelled the growth of SaaS business, MeetEdgar.

Slides, Video & Transcript below

Rather than tell you how great our talks are, and how many cool people you’ll share space with (as all conferences do, let’s be honest), we’d rather let our attendees speak for us.

“Do yourself a favour, get to the next BoS if you want to learn how to run your business better.” Steve McLeod, Barbary Software

“If anyone is in the tech space or is the CEO of a fast growing tech business or software firm, it’s the right place for them.” Eloise Bloniarz, Future Workshops

One of the things which makes us different from other events is the type of people you’ll meet at BoS.

We are for people who are building long-term sustainable businesses; people who aren’t about short-term hacks and flipping, but who are looking to grow something durable.

57% of BoS USA attendees are C Level, VPs or Founders.

The rest are Product Managers/Leads, Software Engineers, Developers and Marketers who want to know more about how their bits fit into the rest of a successful business. (Fun fact: the Marketers are most likely to have either “Overlord” or “Shepherd” in their job title.)

Great to see Mikey Trafton is coming to Business of Software Conference this year.

One of the things we love about BoS is that speakers come back to be in the audience.

Just registered for @bosconference. Can’t wait to hang with @peldi, @asmartbear, @MarkLittlewood and my other BOS peeps.

— Michael Trafton (@mikeytrafton) July 25, 2017

As Mikey says, this will be his fourth time, he spoke twice before. Once about his framework for building a world class culture in business – a lesson he learned the hard way. The following year, he talked about hiring a great team. both talks were funny, thoughtful and packed with practical advice.

Welcome back to BoS USA Mikey. Check out the talks below.

There’s a new coffee machine in town. It’s a bit intimidating.

One of the great things about working at Redgate is the coffee. The company is spread out over three floors and they have one single place on the ground floor where everyone has to go for their daily fix of caffeine, (or a bewildering array of juices, teas, herbal teas, breakfast cereals etc). It’s good for meeting other people in other teams.

But coffee is a big thing here. Last week the coffee machines were replaced. The new machines are scary…

Business of Software Conference – Code of Conduct

Always worth reminding people that this is important for us all. We expect everyone who attends our events in any capacity to treat other human beings well whoever they may be.

All attendees, speakers, sponsors and volunteers at our conference are required to agree with the following code of conduct. Organizers will enforce this code throughout the event. We expect co-operation from all participants to help ensure a safe environment for everybody.

The Quick Version

Social media is great for shouting. Less good for nuanced debate. It rarely changes mass opinions.

If people don’t share your view, you’re unlikely to change their mind by being outraged and emotional on social media. It might feel like you are making well received points, but only other people like you are listening..

A pustulent boil finally burst in the software industry.

Two very high-profile investors, and a few other wannabe high profile investors, have been accused of multiple instances of sexual assault and inappropriate behavior with potential and current employees and investees.

The investors are male. The investees all female. No surprises there. There were a few surprises to come…

Gail Goodman

When Gail became CEO of Constant Contact 17 years ago, she had to persuade venture capitalists that selling anything to SME/SMBs was possible, let alone an online service – THIS WAS THE LAST MILLENNIUM!

Gail considers some of the things she has learned about marketing and serving SMB customers, about the software industry and about leadership along the path to a scale business. She also shares her thoughts behind the ultimate sale of the company, something she describes as good for customers, for employees and for shareholders, even if it was a bittersweet process for her personally.

Slides, Video & Transcript below

Dharmesh Shah, Founder/CTO, Hubspot

Hubspot, the company Dharmesh co-founded in 2006, has grown over time to become a publicly listed company with over 1,000 employees, revenue approaching $200 million and a market cap that makes it a public unicorn. In this talk, Dharmesh shares some of the things he got right as a technical founder but more importantly, some of the mistakes he’s made that challenged his assumptions about how to grow a big ass software business.

Slides, Video & Transcript below