All the talks from previous Business of Software Conferences from one place. Great SaaS & Software Talks.

If you want to watch previous BoS Talks, you can access all of the publicly available ones from here, listed by year. The more recent talks will link to the video of the talk, a transcript, the speakers slides, any follow up online AMAs and attendee notes. Great talks on building SaaS and software businesses.

Enjoy!

Teresa Torres, ProductTalk

Teresa Torres is a Product Coach at ProductTalk.org advocating strong critical thinking practices to ensure there is a strong connection between what teams are learning in their research with the product outcomes that they are making.

If you are like most leaders, you got to where you are because you are good at making decisions. You can quickly go from strategy to execution and you know exactly what should be done next. But if we make all the output decisions (e.g. what to build, what programs to roll out, how a process should work), our company’s solutions are only as good as we are. To avoid this trap, instead of telling our teams what to do, we need to tell them what outcomes we expect them to drive.

Video, Slides, Transcript, Sketchnote below

 Patrick Campbell, CEO ProfitWell

Building a company takes an extraordinary amount of effort, no matter your role, and neither life nor competitors hold punches for anyone. CEO and Founder of ProfitWell, Patrick Campbell knows this first hand.

Using his experience bootstrapping ProfitWell to $10M and beyond (while simultaneously undergoing some pretty big personal roadblocks), he talks us through essential frameworks to help you handle problems in the proper context, while also teaching some operational takeaways to keep you ahead of the increasingly competitive landscape.

Video, Sketchnote, Slides, & Transcript below

Lessons from a critique | Spotify’s Failed Squad Model

You know the one, the one that was so eagerly adopted or admired by almost everyone else – including possibly a company near you…? This critique of ‘Spotify’s Failed Squad Model’ is interesting for two reasons:

• It’s a great way of adapting a planned conference talk into something else that may have impact.
• It’s a warning that critical thinking should never go out of fashion.

First

We salute anyone taking innovative and creative approaches to the challenge of delivering content at conferences – something we have been giving a lot of thought to.

Second

The critique of the Spotify Squad Model…

Black Lives Matter

Racism, injustice, systemic oppression, and inequality are global problems.

The eruption of state-sponsored violence in the US against its citizens leaves us appalled, sickened and feeling helpless.

What is taking place in the US today is more than protesting the murder of George Floyd. It is the culmination of generations of unjust treatment against black people and other marginalized communities.

This is not just a US problem.

Black Lives Matter

Cambridge University lectures online until summer 2021.

This is a big move by one of the leading universities in the world and exemplifies the effect that crises can have in enforcing and driving through change in this case digital transformation. Behind the headline though, there is plenty of nuance, this does not mean the end of education at Cambridge.

This does not mean that students will not attend the University or the end of education.

The Cambridge University teaching model combines lectures with supervisions between in small groups of no more than four people. The intention is that this will continue and students will still be resident in the colleges who all act as independent entities responsible for the welfare of their own students.

This is not the end of education at Cambridge.

It is an organisation thinking radically about how it delivers value to its customers, in this case students, at a time when big thinking and big changes are required.

I remember Clay Christensen talking about disrupting Ivy League education in this talk. He made the point that,

“Harvard Business School… is getting disrupted by crummy low end on the job learning experiences like you are having right now.” Clay Christensen.

[We should use this as a testimonial!]

Elpie Bannister // Former Director of Talent, Simprints
Alex Yang // VP of Engineering, Simprints

The perfect candidate for a role in your company is out there somewhere; you may need to kiss a lot of frogs, but they do exist. But how do you attract good talent, and how do you move an applicant from initial CV submission to long term part of the company?

In this informative BoS Talk, Alex Yang and Elpie Bannister take us through the Simprints’ method of finding, hiring, nurturing, and developing top talent and explain a few of the processes they had to go through to hone this skill.

You will learn how maximising culture, impact, and opportunities for personal development enable Simprints to hire effectively and stand out from the crowd, and that those lessons are applicable to all businesses.

Video, Slides, & Transcript below

In Times of Scarcity, Clear Vision Beats Rapid Iteration – Guest blog post from Radhika Dutt.

Radhika is co-Founder of Radical Product Thinking. She has been based in Singapore for the past two years, will be speaking at BoS Conference USA Online as well as running online product masterclasses in the lead up to the event.

NB, Business of Software is not qualified to offer advice or comment on the political, medical, healthcare, epidemiological or other scientific issues around disease outbreaks, so we won’t. We will cover thoughtful, non-link bait perspectives on lessons that may be of interest and relevance to our audience. We believe you will find this worthwhile.

In Times of Scarcity, Clear Vision Beats Rapid Iteration

Lean Startup changed how we built products when it was published in 2011 – it lowered the risk in innovation by shortening development cycles. In the years that followed, we’ve had the luxury of an abundance of resources – the economy was on an upswing and credit was more easily accessible. Many companies took the Lean methodology too far and began to over-rely on iteration. It was easy to try things in the market and keep iterating to see what works.

Sometimes however, you need more than iteration, you need to rethink.

One Trait Entrepreneurs Who Copy Steve Jobs Share

Want to Entrepreneur like Steve Jobs? How many entrepreneurs do you know who model themselves, consciously or unconsciously, on Steve Jobs? I can name more people I know than I have fingers (8 ✋🤚 at last count).

They all share one common trait and it’s easy for you to copy.

Alex Osterwalder, Co-Founder Strategyzer

Alex Osterwalder is a leading author, entrepreneur, and renowned speaker whose work has changed the way companies do business and how new ventures get started. In this BoS Talk from 2019, Alex will discuss how you can manage a portfolio of products successfully. How can you invent a new business model, improve existing ones, and manage them all across the organization.

You will learn:

• how to map the exploration of new business ideas and test them in a simple and practical way
• how to manage and improve the businesses and products you already have
• how much profit existing business models generate
• how to point out any synergies/conflicts between your models.

Sketchnote, Video, Slides, Transcript, & Resources below

Business of Software Conference USA 2020 will be an Online Event

Wherever you will be in the world on the 21st-23rd September, you can participate, learn, network and spend quality time with some of the smartest SaaS & software people on the planet. No plane tickets to buy, no hotel rooms to book, and no waiting in a queue for coffee (depending on the size of your family).

We had so much fun at BoS Europe Online back in March, and we learned a lot about what makes a BoS event special.

With that knowledge and experience in the bank, we’re going to make BoS USA Online even better for attendees.