The countdown is on: just 10 days until BoS USA 2025 kicks off on October 6 in Raleigh, NC.
The Business of Software (BoS) Conference USA 2025 brings together software founders, CEOs and emerging leaders who want to build profitable, enduring companies.
This year’s program zeroes in on the most pressing challenges SaaS companies face today: From scaling with clarity, to weathering economic uncertainty, to finding independence and making sense of AI’s impact on go-to-market strategy.
Here’s what to expect at BoS USA 2025: a world-class lineup of founders and leaders sharing unfiltered lessons, actionable frameworks and takeaways you can put to work immediately.
AI is not just a feature; it is reshaping entire business models. Several speakers will provide grounded, strategic advice on how to survive and thrive in this new era.
Amir Salihefendić: Invisible, Essential, Inevitable – AI Where It Matters
Amir Salihefendić, CEO and founder of Doist (the remote-first company behind Todoist and Twist), will share the good, the bad, and the ugly of guiding his 100-person, fully remote company through an AI-first transition.
• The Challenge: Ensuring your product and organization evolve rapidly as Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly powerful.
• The Takeaway: You will leave with practical principles for riding the AI wave. The key lesson for founders is to embrace AI, lead by example, and build leaner, smarter companies prepared for the future. At Doist, AI is used to eliminate grunt work across roles and serves as an invisible engine at the heart of the user experience.
Claire Lew: The Blind Spots That Break Us – What Leaders Are Missing Most in the Age of AI
Claire Lew, Founder & CEO of Canopy, works closely with CEOs and executive teams, observing their successes and stumbles.
• The Challenge: Leaders often feel immense pressure to deliver AI-driven results and keep pace with change, compressed from years into months. The challenge is identifying and overcoming the most common leadership blind spots that arise in this AI-accelerated world.
• The Takeaway: Based on lessons from 24 months of advisory work, Claire will offer practical ways to help your team perform at the highest level and to lead with clarity and confidence.
Georgiana Laudi: AI’s Impact on SaaS GTM Strategy
Georgiana Laudi, Co-founder of Forget the Funnel, will delve into the strategic implications of AI for marketing, positioning, and customer experience.
• The Challenge: AI acts as an accelerant, amplifying existing strengths while exposing weaknesses in Go-To-Market (GTM) foundations. Founders must learn to cut through the noise and avoid having their products commoditized.
• The Takeaway: You will learn how to combine AI tools with qualitative customer insight for smarter GTM decisions. You will gain the ability to develop sharper positioning and messaging that truly differentiates your product in AI-saturated markets, and identify when and how AI can improve onboarding, retention, and customer success.
Chris Mele and Bill Spruill: The Price of AI
Chris Mele (CEO, Software Pricing Partners) and Bill Spruill (co-Founder and CEO, Global Data Consortium) are teaming up to tackle the critical issue of monetizing AI features.
• The Challenge: Many software companies are rushing to embed generative AI, leading to potential long-term pricing pitfalls. Common missteps include launching features without validated value, poor packaging decisions (add-on pollution), and adopting credit-based models prematurely.
• The Takeaway: The discussion will set you on the right path with pricing strategy tips designed to capture the value new AI features deliver. You will learn how to think critically about building resilient, data-informed pricing models that are based on real-time usage and value data, avoiding today’s hype-driven mispricing traps.
These sessions focus on how founders can overcome growth plateaus, define organizational strategy, and build enduring businesses independent of outside influence.
Jason Cohen: Escaping the Growth Ceiling: The Hidden Forces Capping Your Growth and How to Break Past Them
Jason Cohen, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer at WP Engine, is known for building and scaling successful software companies.
• The Challenge: Breaking past the hidden forces that often cap a company’s growth.
• The Takeaway: This session will provide insights into identifying and overcoming these constraints to help you continue building, running, and scaling a great SaaS or software company.
Joel Gascoigne: Navigating a Multi-Year Decline to New All-Time-Highs
Joel Gascoigne, Founder & CEO of Buffer, will share a candid story of perseverance after experiencing the largest decline in his company’s history.
• The Challenge: After nine straight years of growth, Buffer’s ARR dropped 20% over four years. The challenge was steering the company during this decline to achieve new all-time highs.
• The Takeaway: Joel will detail the missteps and early warning signs of an emerging plateau. You will learn about strengthening culture during a turnaround, seeking a new path, and embracing differentiation to thrive long-term.
Chris Savage: Building Beyond the Investment Next Round
Chris Savage, CEO & Co-founder of Wistia, provides an update on his journey after raising $17.9 million in debt to buy out his investors in 2022.
• The Challenge: Steering a profitable, independent company through shifting markets while resisting short-term investor pressures.
• The Takeaway: Independence unlocked freedom, alignment, and renewed innovation, proving to be a competitive advantage that fueled sustainable growth. This session is packed with real stories to inspire you to rethink scale, culture, and success and grow on your own terms.
Bruce McCarthy: Evolving Clear Strategy from Emerging Vision
Bruce McCarthy, Founder of Product Culture and author of Product Roadmaps Relaunched, addresses the complexities of leadership alignment.
• The Challenge: As a founder’s role expands (fundraising, sales, marketing), even aligned teams can shift focus, and strategic confusion can stall growth. A critical decision CEOs face is determining who maintains strategic alignment.
• The Takeaway: Bruce will offer a clear framework to define emerging leadership roles and demonstrate why this function is critical. You will learn why the right Chief Product Officer (CPO) can be your secret weapon in the quest to remain focused
These speakers provide playbooks for optimizing internal structures, leadership, and sales functions.
Joe Leech: Designing Your Ideal Leadership Team
Joe Leech, Founder of Mr Joe, argues that the next level of growth comes from how you hire, align, and lead the people around you.
• The Challenge: Most founders underinvest in people problems because they feel messy and hard to measure, resulting in the founder becoming the business bottleneck.
• The Takeaway: This session offers a practical playbook for moving faster by optimising your top team. You will gain new mental models and tools to apply immediately, learning how to turn your team into your growth engine.
Kristie Jones: Overcoming Founder Advantage – Building a Sales Team That Scales
Kristie Jones, the Sales Enchantress, will guide founders on transitioning from being the sole salesperson to building a scalable sales engine.
• The Challenge: The “founder’s advantage” (deep product passion, credibility, and instant trust) is the reason sales work initially, but it’s also the reason they will stall out later if the founder doesn’t step aside.
• The Takeaway: Kristie will share founder-tested frameworks (not sales-guru fluff) to unlock a scalable sales structure. You will learn the critical question to ask before hiring, how to hire the right first salesperson, and how your role changes post-hire.
Pierre Chamberland: Just Make Everyone A Shareholder
Pierre Chamberland, CEO & Founder of Netgovern, shares lessons from his unconventional 30-year journey.
• The Challenge: Deciding whether to implement employee ownership and navigating the mechanics and perceived ‘cost’ of doing so.
• The Takeaway: Pierre will share why employee ownership isn’t just a “feel-good idea”; it led to extraordinary retention and an exit where staff shared in the rewards. Attendees will learn why employee ownership drives financial literacy, accountability, and investability, building companies worth owning.
Chika Emebo & Mark Stephens: When Four Worlds Collide – Turning Generational Diversity into your Superpower
Chika Emebo and Mark Stephens (IDRSolutions) address the unique dynamics of the modern workplace.
• The Challenge: For the first time ever, four generations (Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Zoomers) are working together, leading to misunderstandings due to very different formative experiences and fears.
• The Takeaway: Chika and Mark will provide the “Map” needed to effectively mix these different individuals. They will dig into the real differences and offer practical actions and ideas to implement, turning generational diversity into a resilient, high-functioning superpower.
BoS USA 2025 also features several crucial discussions covering niche aspects of scaling and leadership:
• John Knox (CEO Founder, Moving Average) presents The Introvert’s Guide to Networking: The Hidden Growth Lever.
• Ivan Barajas Vargas (CEO Founder, MuukTest) discusses the Top 15 Reasons the Vibes are Off With Vibe Coding.
• Art Koenig (CEO Founder, xGEL Data Systems) asks: Land and Expand? Oh, Really Now..
• Raj Mahajan (Founder, Jaan Capital) shares lessons from Fragile Deals, Enduring Lessons.
• David Robison (Founder CEO, Design Master Software) offers guidance on How to Hire Your Next Employee.
BoS Conference is a three-day single-track conference, ensuring attendees get focused learning and community interaction.
With two days of breakout sessions and dedicated “meet the speakers” time now included in the schedule, you will have ample opportunity to gain actionable insights and build a community that stays with you long after the conference closes.
The event will be held entirely at The StateView Hotel, allowing attendees to stay connected easily throughout the conference.
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