As the saying goes, “Learning goes beyond the four corners of the room.” Conferences are one of the those events that people from different corners of the world and varying professions come to. Conferences are designed to welcome individuals as participants in collaborative learning and networking beyond their personal spheres towards expanding horizons, which is really necessary in business-building. While sounds great, events like these are still daunting for some, especially introverts.
Introverts, known for energizing in solitude, may be drained by large crowds. Attending conferences can feel like a challenge despite the potential benefits. Navigating a sea of unfamiliar faces requires unique strategies to ensure they thrive, not just survive, at conferences. Though challenging, these cannot hinder introverts like me from attending conferences. We have the drive to learn and connect. We just need our unique ways to come and show up ourselves to enjoy advantageous conferences at their best. So for introverts like me out there, here are some quiet strategies to conquering conferences.
Raleigh, NC – The Business of Software Conference USA (BoSConf USA), world’s leading event for SaaS and software entrepreneurs globally, returns to Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 23-25, 2024. This 3-day conference marks the second year of the conference partnering with the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) to bring this acclaimed event to the heart of one of the fastest-growing tech clusters in the U.S.
Building on the success of BoS USA 2023, BoS Conf USA 2024 extends a unique opportunity for local and international software leaders to share knowledge, network, and gain insights from the world’s best. The conference fosters collaboration and growth within the local software ecosystem, providing access to the hard-won experiences and insights of industry leaders directly in North Carolina.
Us humans, we are driven to build. From a young age, we explore different possibilities, building things out of curiosity. Through experimentation and experience, we discover what ignites our passion. This innate desire to build translates into every aspect of our lives, including our careers. As adults, we continue to build, but now our creations extend beyond ourselves, benefiting entire industries, customer, and communities.
Having honed your building skills, the next crucial question arises: what will you create? The world is already saturated with products and services. To avoid contributing to the noise, you need to build something truly purposeful for the customers. Otherwise, you risk wasting your valuable efforts on something people will simply discard. So, what exactly is it we should build? Where do we begin this journey?
In a recent BoS Hangout with innovation expert Bob Moesta, I learned a valuable lesson: the best starting point for building anything is to identify your customer’s hidden struggles. What are the customers battling with before having your products or services. These are the pain points they might not even realize they have. By solving these ‘unknown unknowns,’ you can anchor your project and ensure a positive outcome. True innovation lies not in fulfilling known desires, but in uncovering and addressing these hidden needs.
So how can find the unknown when even the customers does not even know them?
Bob is a generous guy to impart the five skills of an innovator. Five skills that can help you tackle sectors in building something that works, match with customer battles, and fight them.
1. Empathetic Perspective
See through varying viewpoints. Building with empathetic perspective means seeing the big picture. It’s about understanding situations from multiple perspectives to identify potential problems before they arise. This goes beyond just the customer. Imagine you’re developing a new ordering kiosk for a fast-food chain. From a customer’s viewpoint, it needs to be user-friendly. But marketing wants a glitzy design, while finance puts costs lower first. By considering everyone involved (internal stakeholders like marketing and finance, and external ones like investors), you can anticipate clashes (e.g., expensive features confusing users) and design a product that balances everyone’s needs.
2. Uncovering Demand
Surface hidden opportunities. Ditch the product pitch and peek into your customers’ world. What are their daily struggles? There’s always that they ultimately want. Know that instead of enforcing that to them. By understanding their journey (the who, what, when, where, and why), you can see how your product fits in. Forget bragging about features – focus on the value it brings to their lives. A great way to do that is to have a conversation with your happy customers and learn how your product helped them reached their goals and overcome the challenges
3. Causal Structures
Building something is like navigating through a map that shows you how everything is connected. They explain the “why” behind the “what” happening. Connect the dots. This lets product builders predict what will happen next and make informed choices upon having the insight behind the scenes.
Bob painted a picture of how things work: causal structures. Imagine a system at the center, like a machine. It needs fuel to run, and that fuel comes in various forms – resources, money, knowledge, data, even physical objects – these are your Inputs. The system then processes this fuel through your actions, churning out Outputs. But here’s the key: those Outputs need to perfectly match the desired Outcomes for your product’s users
4. Prototyping to Learn
Build-measure-learn. People often prototype to prove their ideas right, rather than learn what users actually need. Come in with a variety of concepts. Test them in the jobs you intend to put these concepts into. Because later on, the differences of the results from these concepts creates contrasts, and contrasts creates meaning that brings you closer to the solution for the particular job the product/service you are trying to design for. There are no failures here. Be glad to have tested several concepts and identified those are not the fit for the job as you can now eliminate them and focus on the most promising ones.
5. Making Trade-offs
Strike a balance. A trade-off is where a customer weighs the unique pros and cons of the available options. It is where one finds the product or service that best meets their needs. In simpler terms, it’s about narrowing down your options until you have one, best favorite.
Say, you are hungry at the moment with no food in the place you are in. You have options of cooking your own meal that you can perfectly match with your buds, but might take you much longer time and effort in buying the ingredients you need, or order online which will just make you wait and do something else, but might cost you more and less tasty. You start to weigh things, assess and eliminate whichever option best satisfies your current status. That’s where a customer makes a trade-off.
Do I have to master them all to win my customer?
It was a relief when Bob cleared that I do not have to be a master of all these five skills, but it pays to be aware of them, revisit them, and apply whichever project a particular skill is most helpful. Many other innovators from different parts of the world came to the BoS Hangout with Bob. Some were product builders as anticipated, but there were also team leaders, brand guardians, finance folks, it was a wide range of cast. Needless to say, customers go beyond being the product users. They can also be members of the company or a problem within budgeting.
There is a recording of the latest BoS Hangout here. If you missed it, you can watch it at your convenience.
Bob is also no stranger to the BoS Community. He’s been coming to BoS Conferences for a number of times in many years. We even stored a particular library dedicated to him. Take a look of the collection of his previous talks and see him from different angles.
Bob, and other brilliant personalities, is coming to BoS USA 2024. Get to hangout with him and the rest of amazing people from across the globe while learning from our industry leader speakers. They are just as welcoming. See you all there.
Want more of these insightful talks?
At BoS we run events and publish highly-valued content for anyone building, running, or scaling a SaaS or software business.
Sign up for a weekly dose of latest actionable and useful content.
Unsubscribe any time. We will never sell your email address. It is yours.
After many sleepless nights of research and contemplation, you finally started your own company on Day 1. Time fast forward, you’ve nurtured your company from a startup to a growing business, but new challenges have emerged. There is the cut-throat, market competition, limitations of resources, etc. Stimulating your company’s growth has been tougher and more complicated than ever. There is a need for you to change. What if you can turn these challenges into your advantages? One of the strategic steps you can consider is an M&A or Merger and Acquisition.
On the grounds of Churchill College, the Business of Software Conference Europe once again unfolded last 25-26 March 2024.
Sunday – Pre-conference activities
Prior to the official start of the BoS Conference Europe 2024, a group of attendees and speakers gathered to embark on an open-bus tour, led and supported by Christopher Moore of Quiet Light.
After the tour, everyone got together for drinks, where everyone met new folks and caught up with old friends from previous BoS conferences. It was a fun way to kick off the conference, setting a friendly and welcoming vibe for the days ahead.
Monday – Conference Day 1
Day 1 of BoS Europe kicked off in full swing, setting the tone for an enlightening and engaging event filled with valuable insights and meaningful connections. From thought-provoking keynote speeches to interactive discussions over lunch, the day was brimming with opportunities for learning and networking.
Morning Sessions
The day commenced with an insightful session by Joe Leech, who delved into the seven essential traits of a modern CEO. Following Joe’s insightful talk, attendees were treated to a 2-hour session by the renowned Bob Moesta, who did an improv centered around Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) theory. Bob’s engaging improv showcased real-world problems and solutions, and how understanding customer needs and motivations can drive innovation and success in software businesses.
Lunch and Birds of a Feather discussion tables
At BoS, lunch isn’t just about refueling – it’s an opportunity to connect with fellow attendees on a deeper level. From discussing the intricacies of software development to sharing personal preferences like whether one prefers cats or dogs, lunchtime conversations sparked new friendships and fostered a sense of community among attendees.
Afternoon Sessions
The afternoon sessions kicked off with Imogen Wethered sharing her expertise in starting and selling a business, offering valuable advice and practical tips for aspiring entrepreneurs. As the day drew to a close, Dr. Eleanor Gunn led an interactive session aimed at connecting attendees with their core values. Through thought-provoking exercises and discussions, Dr. Gunn encouraged participants to reflect on their personal and professional values, fostering a deeper sense of purpose and alignment.
Breakout Sessions
What makes BoS unique is the dedicated breakout sessions, where attendees engage directly with experts in smaller, interactive settings. These sessions foster deeper discussions, personalised advice, and valuable networking opportunities, ensuring attendees gain tailored insights and forge meaningful connections.
The day concluded with a lively dinner at the dining hall, where attendees had the opportunity to unwind and socialise in a relaxed setting. Amidst delicious food and lively conversation, attendees reflected on the day’s learnings and eagerly anticipated what lay ahead in the days to come.
Tuesday – Conference Day 2
Morning Sessions
The morning began with an announcement that Matt Lerner was unable to attend due to personal reasons. However, attendees were pleasantly surprised when they received copies of his new book, “Growth Levers and How to Find Them”, as a token of his presence in spirit.
In his place, Bill Thompson stepped in and read a captivating letter from 2107, offering a glimpse into the future of software and technology.
Following this unexpected start, Oyinda Bagbose took the stage to discuss how technology can still save the world and support the work of NGOs. Then, Ninnu Campbell, self-proclaimed Chief Failure Officer, took attendees on a journey of embracing failure as a pathway to becoming a more effective leader.
Afternoon Inspiration
The afternoon sessions kicked off with Duane Jackson, who shared his inspirational story of going from behind bars to successfully starting and selling a business. His resilience and determination served as a powerful reminder of the transformative power of entrepreneurship.
Next up, Claire Suellentrop offered insights into operationalising Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) theory, providing attendees with practical strategies for implementing this framework within their organisations. The day concluded with a session led by Bruce McCarthy on how to align executive teams for success.
As we bid farewell to the Business of Software Conference Europe 2024, we do so with a sense of excitement and anticipation for the future. The knowledge gained, connections forged, and inspiration gleaned from this conference will serve as fuel for the journey ahead. Armed with new insights and a renewed sense of purpose, attendees are poised to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities that lie ahead in the ever-evolving world of software business.
Software, to the average person, is pretty boring.
‘Words are actually free. Now, getting them wrong is expensive. But if we can get them right and get some attention on our copy, we can actually stand out – even if we’re no different from our competitors – because everybody saying the same meaningless things,’ Joanna Wiebe, founder of Copyhackers says in her 2015 BoS USA talk.
Read on to learn why your words aren’t getting through and how to write copy that converts.
For a full version of this talk, including a video recording and transcript, click here.
In his 2010 talk, Smart Bear and WP Engine founder Jason Cohen talks about the proverbial ‘rules of business’ and many varying pieces of advice founders get – often from well-meaning mentors and experts. However, even good-intentioned advice isn’t always the right advice.
Cohen shares some entertaining and illustrative stories as well as some excellent arguments for when (and when not) to take advice from others in his talk, ‘Working Out When to Break the Rules & Ignore Advice’. The biggest takeaway: You should write your own business rules.
For a full version of this talk, including a video recording and transcript, click here.
Starting any business is hard. There’s no perfect playbook laying out all the right turns to take and potholes to avoid. Unfortunately, we’re all prone to make mistakes. But those mistakes are often what lead to the most important, eye-opening lessons on how to get things right in business.
One of the best ways to sidestep later trouble is to learn from leaders who have already experienced it. In his 2022 BoS USA talk, Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, lays out some of the biggest mistakes he’s made (and lessons he’s learnt) as a founder. Here are some of the main takeaways from his presentation.
When you think about trying to scale your software business and sell your product – especially in today’s world, where AI now seems to be the automatic default – you may be stressing over how to do it well.
Current logic suggests the best option is to cut out as much human interaction as possible. After all, the more humans you have working, the more expensive it is to run your company. And while advances in technology like ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools can now mimic humanity and sound more like humans and less robotic, they’re still imperfect tools. Customers know they’re not speaking to an actual human.
Here’s some food for thought:
Humans like to deal with humans. And humans like to buy from other human beings.
If you want to sell something – be it software or handbags or cars or bananas – it pays to consider that.
Steli Efti, co-founder of Close, one of the most widely-used SaaS CRM tools on the market, shared his views on how software companies – even ones with particularly lean teams (Close.io has only 9 members itself) – should make more of an effort to push sales in their organisations in his BoS USA 2015 talk, ‘How to Sell Software Using Sales’.
For a full version of this talk, including a video recording and transcript, click here.
5 Ways to Sell Software Using Sales
No matter your product or what you’re trying to peddle to your customers, being successful requires one major thing: sales.
Too often, startup founders spend time hoping for a miracle. We want some kind of free, viral, network effect – a silver bullet, so to speak – to suddenly ‘flip the switch’ and skyrocket our software company to profitability.
But that’s not the reality for most software entrepreneurs. That kind of success takes work; there are no silver bullets.
This creeping progression is what Gail Goodman, former CEO of Constant Contact, refers to as ‘the long, slow SaaS ramp of death’.
