David Cancel, CEO & Founder, Drift

David Cancel is a five-time entrepreneur, two-time CEO, angel investor, and currently the CEO at 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.

Every company claims to be ‘customer-driven’. They’ll have framed posters on the wall – “Solve for The Customer.” None of that means anything unless you actually make the structural decisions to ensure it. Why is hiring people who are customer-driven the key to a successful product team? David explains in this talk how to structure product teams to increase employee retention and customer focus. What does a feedback loop directly between the engineers and customers look like? Roadmaps solve for the company not the customer. What solves for the customer is non-stop testing and continuous improvement. Introducing unnecessary process can create barriers to customer centricity. What processes should you incorporate? What metrics should product teams and engineers be guided by?

Slides, Video & Transcript below

This is a very interesting slide deck considering the software business and the long term future of the software industry.

Two particularly useful sections:

• The five forces accelerating software’s growth.
• Considerations for the modern software CEO.

Well worth looking through.

We had some fantastic applications for the scholarship places, and we’re delighted to announce that the BoS Europe 2017 scholars are:

• Sam Heter – Hoopfix
• Lucy Friedman – Switchmetrics
• Theo England – Cucumber
• Faisal Chohan – Cogilent
• Mohammed Al Rasbi – Research and Development
• George Bettany – Sanctus
• Stefan Magnusson – Mystery Applicant
• Seun Awoyele – Devcenter

Nick Halstead, CEO & Founder, Cognitive Logic

Nick is the Founder of Cognitive Logic Inc which is building unique technology to allow collaboration on corporate data between companies without data needing to be shared or transmitted.

Nick discusses some of the things that he has learned at DataSift he is applying to his new startup, from deciding when to take money, the good and bad of relying on large partners, dealing with organisational change in a high growth business and coping with the everyday stresses and strains of running a business in hyper-growth mode as a first time founder with a young family.

Hear from more founders at Business of Software Europe 2017: our agenda features talks from the founders of Intern Avenue, Swiftkey, Teamwork and more

Slides, Video, Notes & Transcript below

Stephen Allott spoke at Bos Europe 2016 – just one example of the smart software people we bring to our events. View our BoS Europe 2017 agenda for more information about this year’s speakers.

Stephen Allott, Chairman, Pebble Code

We’re in the Second Machine Age, demand for software is rocketing. Large enterprises and governments are adopting cloud, open source, SaaS platforms and bespoke agile apps. They’re trying to re-engineer processes, transform service quality and costs. There has never been a better time to grow a software business and sell to large organisations.

Companies in all industries want a ‘digital transformation’ but also have to overcome the internal barriers within their own organisations to change. Stephen, draws on his experiences working with the UK’s Government Digital Service to share lessons learnt in attempting to transform one of the largest, most IT intensive behemoths into an organisation that is, ‘Digital by Default’ How can you profit from this shift?

Slides, Video, Notes & Transcript below

Peter Coppinger has cited BoS talks as “changing his company”. He made the leap from BoS regular attendee to BoS speaker in 2016. Check out the BoS Europe  2017 agenda for more “company changing” talks.

Peter Coppinger, Co-founder & CEO, Teamwork

Peter has done a few uncommon things in his career. He built a product business out of a consulting business, he has built a company to $12 million ARR without external funding, as a developer, he has consistently undervalued the other elements a business needs to be successful. Though it has turned out OK, Peter discusses some of the challenges of making the jump from consulting to a product business and consider some of the key things that he wished he had done sooner as he built Teamwork.com.

Slides, Video, Notes & Transcript below

Steli Efti, Co-founder & CEO, Close.io

Steli Efti is the co-founder and CEO of Close.io. He’s Silicon Valley’s most prominent sales hustler, a YC alumni, advisor to several startups and entrepreneurs and the author of The Ultimate Startup Guide To Outbound Sales.

Steli shares some of the tips and tricks he has learned as one of the best sales hustlers and hackers in the software business. No dark arts, no magic bullets, just solid advice, proven processes and plans that will be applicable to anyone, from single developer, through to a large established sales organisation. Having worked with some of the most successful startups to come out of the incubators such as Y-Combinator, as well as established public software businesses, Steli has a unique view of what you can do to close sales and why sales should not just be left to sales people.

Slides, Video, Notes & Transcript below

Eva Pascoe, Director of Ecommerce, The Retail Practice

So much of what we take for granted today has only just been invented, some of it by Eva.

Eva’s career has been built off the back of spotting and acting on emerging trends and she knows stuff!

We caught up with Scott Berkun, author of Dance of the Possible, the mostly honest completely irreverent guide to creativity and asked him anything. We tried hard to keep to the topic of creativity…

Here are some of the highlights…

Promise Phelon, CEO, TapInfluence

Promise Phelon discusses Silicon Valley culture, being black in Boulder, the role of the CEO and why perks are just the tip of the culture iceberg.

A sustainable business culture is only possible if you consider what is below the surface first. It’s too easy to confuse perks – 401k, travel, free food – as the mark of a good culture. The reality is perks are meaningless without deep thought about the behaviours you encourage within your workplace – an ownership culture, transparency of performance and compensation, clarity about what it takes to win and building winning habits amongst your team. Culture is reinforced by strong leaders with a willingness to address some of the daily things that stop us from letting emotional triggers preventing us from building a great company.

Slides, Video & Transcript below