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!

Boston Events During BoS Conference

Boston isn’t just the home of your favorite SaaS and software conference. There is plenty going on. This year, you could take the opportunity to see, among others, Baseball – Redsox vs Giants, Lizzo, ZZ Top, David Byrne, King Crimson, The Who, a Downton Abbey Exhibition (!) and lots, lots more.

Here are a few of the things you could do while you are at the conference in 2019.

Greg Baugues, Developer Community Manager, Twilio

Greg Baugues has bipolar disorder and ADHD. He spoke at BoS USA 2013 in an extraordinary talk that has been instrumental in helping start a conversation for many about mental health in tech. Today, he leads the Developer Community team at Twilio. In this short talk, he updates the BoS Community his story, and shares some of the lessons he has learned that go beyond talk, with some thoughts and observations that will help you to support coworkers and others who we suspect might be struggling with their mental health.

Talking is the first step. How can you best support a co-worker who is strong enough to take it?

Video, Slides, and Transcript below

Matt Wensing, Founder, SimSaaS

Warren Buffett said “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” We’ve all experienced that feeling of immense ignorance as leaders of software businesses. One area of constant anxiety is not really knowing how adjusting or changing one component of our business will impact the whole. Software businesses contain an incredible number of moving parts and variables. How can we isolate and study them? For most of us, it’s a combination of trial and error and learning from others’ mistakes when they’re brave enough to share them. Matt has spent the last 10 years starting and running his own software company (Riskpulse), learning many hard lessons along the way.

This led him to wonder: in addition to stumbling forward and searching for mentors, could he write software to simulate the future of his business? What lessons could it teach him? What could he learn if his computer could run 1,000 different startups in minutes, not years?  What light could a simulation like this shed on the underlying laws (physics) of software businesses? About people?

Video, Slides, and Transcript below

Impossible unsubscribes

In this week’s excellent newsletter, (you should subscribe if you are smart & cynical enough), we shared this Twitter thread showing why it can take several days to unsubscribe from some newsletters.

Wow.

This September there are 7 returning speakers at Business of Software.

It’s a delight to be welcoming Rahul Vohra, Rita McGrath, Alex Osterwalder, Steli Efti, Matt Wensing, and Patrick Campbell back to the stage at BoS, and to have Claire Lew back to lead a half-day workshop. We don’t welcome speakers back to BoS lightly – we’ve asked them to come back because their talks were top quality and because the BoS community have asked to hear more from them.

In anticipation of their return, we’re taking a look back at some of their previous talks. Read on below to find great talks about:

• Optimising for Product-Market Fit
• Why competitive advantage doesn’t mean what it used to
• Proven ways to increase your sales
• Implementing a pricing process
• How to design organisational culture

and more…

Bill Janeway, Managing Director, Warburg Pincus

There are few people as qualified to talk about the landscape of software investment as Bill Janeway. On joining Venture Capital firm Warburg Pincus in 1988 he built their IT Investment practice, which focussed heavily on Enterprise Software. It’s fair to say that they were pretty successful, investing in companies like VERITAS and BEA…

In this talk, Bill looks at the state of the software investment market and comments on how the move to SaaS has affected the enterprise market.

Video, Slides, & Transcript below

17 Talks From Seasoned Entrepreneurs

At every Business of Software Conference we record the talks so that you, the great people of the internet, can join in the feast of learning that our attendees get to gorge themselves upon. We release new talks regularly right here on our blog.

Below, you’ll find the 17 videos we’ve published so far this year. Speakers include Rahul Vohra (Founder/CEO, Superhuman), Wade Foster (Founder/CEO, Zapier), Jane Austin (Director of Product Design, Babylon Health), Jared Spool (Founder, UIE), and many more.

We’ve grouped them into 6 categories, for you to browse easily:

1. Leadership
2. Product & UX
3. Building Teams
4. Creativity
5. Sales & Marketing
6. Business Models

Come, join a multitude of SaaS entrepreneurs at the great watering hole of knowledge to learn from some incredible teachers.

Jane Austin, Director of Product Design, Babylon Health

How can good design be integrated into your business profitably? Jane answers the question by considering the ‘anti-problem’, sharing 10 ways designers and business people can guarantee their behaviours and activities will ensure they never see eye-to-eye, their efforts will be wasted and everyone involved will know it is not their fault. You will probably recognise most of these techniques in action in your own organisation… Watch, and learn how to integrate design into your team effectively.

Video, Slides, & Transcript below

Why don’t customers get, buy and love your product?

This guest post was written by Caroline Brown, co-founder of The Scale Partnership, a Cambridge UK-based positioning and marketing strategy specialist.

“Positioning is the cough medicine talk. You only go because it’s good for you.” So began April Dunford’s prescription at the Cambridge, UK launch of her first book, Obviously Awesome, hosted by Business of Software.

So somewhat ironically, ‘positioning’ itself has a positioning problem. But how do you know whether your product – or indeed company – has nailed it or nosedived into a viper pit of a positioning? And why does it matter? Isn’t growth hacking where it’s all at, anyway?

In short, no.

Mikey Trafton, CTO, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas

There are 3 reasons your team isn’t doing what you want them to do, says Mikey Trafton.

1. They don’t know what you want them to do
2. They aren’t motivated to do what you want them to do
3. They’re not capable of doing what you want them to do

In his 3rd talk at Business of Software, Mikey picked up from where he left off at the end of his previous talk ‘How To Recruit A Badass Team‘. You’ve hired a great team, but you need to learn how to manage them. Mikey is here to help you help your employees succeed with processes, tools, advice, and war stories from his experience as an entrepreneur.

Video, Slides, & Transcript below