The 5 Most Watched BoS Talks of the Decade

2010-2019: The 5 Most Watched Talks From Business of Software Conferences

As I hope you know by now, you can watch over 200 talks from Business of Software online for free. We think it’s probably the best collection of talks about building and growing great software companies available.

Here at Business of Software we often get asked what our favourite BoS talk is. We think that’s an unfair question – our conferences are like our children, and we love them all equally! Having said that, I love a list – and it feels wrong not to celebrate some of the fantastic talks across our conferences over the past decade.

So we’re joining with the great throng of Best-Of-The-Decade lists, with the 5 BoS talks that the internet hive-mind has watched the most over the past 10 years.

Without Further Ado…

1 // Building The Minimum Badass User – Kathy Sierra (Author, Badass)

https://businessofsoftware.wistia.com/medias/zt8mr9ji3g?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=400

 

You may well be familiar with Kathy’s work, possibly through her book ‘Badass: Making Users Awesome’. This talk, given 3 years before the book was released, is better than whatever you think the best thing since sliced bread is. In her inimitable style, Kathy suggests it’s not about showing users that your company is awesome – it’s about making the users awesome.

Watch Kathy's Talk

 

2 // The Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp Of Death – Gail Goodman (Former CEO, Constant Contact)

https://businessofsoftware.wistia.com/medias/8rih0cxmi3?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=400

 

“They said it couldn’t be done, but we went out and did it anyway”. Gail Goodman spent 16 years as the CEO of Constant Contact, joining them before they had funding or a product. I think it’s fair to say that Gail has authority when talking about negotiating how to grow and scale a business. A must watch.

Watch Gail's Talk

 

3 // Rewrite! – David Heinemeier Hansson (Founder/CTO, Basecamp)

https://businessofsoftware.wistia.com/medias/s8b8cwos6o?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=400

 

Joel Spolsky once said that the worst possible thing a software company could do was to rewrite their software from scratch. DHH says “Please. Rewrite your damn software“. And after 2 whole rewrites, Basecamp has over 2.5 million registered accounts. Maybe there’s something to what he’s saying…

Watch David's Talk

 

4 // The Product-Market Fit Engine – Rahul Vohra (Founder/CEO, Superhuman)

https://businessofsoftware.wistia.com/medias/vabu1puq1h?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=400

 

Did you know can optimize for Product-Market Fit? That was Rahul Vohra’s thesis at Business of Software USA 2018. In just 30 minutes, Rahul lays out a framework to optimize for product-market fit by segmenting your customers based on answers to a feedback survey, and doubling down on the feature requests and issues that will really drive growth in your business.

Watch Rahul's Talk

 

5 // Uncovering The Jobs-To-Be-Done – Bob Moesta & Chris Spiek (Co-Founders, The ReWired Group)

https://businessofsoftware.wistia.com/medias/z5fupy87qz?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=400

 

Customers lie. Sad but true. Not maliciously, not even consciously, but most customers don’t know what they want from their product. Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek see it as a great opportunity to get ahead of the competition and in this excellent talk they demonstrate how to unearth some deep insights into customer motivation using the Jobs to be Done framework – including a fascinating interview with an attendee to discover why they bought that specific model.

Watch Bob & Chris's Talk

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