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!

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.

How To Run A Successful Online Event

We aren’t in a Kansas Hotel anymore.

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, event organizers and attendees alike have woken up to the realization that we’re not in that familiar place anymore. And for us all, just as in the Wizard of Oz, what we know worked in Kansas, doesn’t necessarily work online.

For those of you who prefer your literary references to be a little more highbrow…

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” LP Hartley, The Go Between.

As organizers and participants, we need to recognize that this will not change any time soon (sorry to break it to you if this is news), and work towards building better experiences for everyone that utilize the benefits and advantages of our new virtual venue rather than try to replicate the old model.

We all need to think about designing events from the outset in a different way. In March 2020 we ran Business of Software Conference Europe as an online event. Since then, I’ve also sat through a huge number of other events too, as I’m sure you have.

My main reflection:

Online events will struggle to engage your audience and may seriously harm your reputation as an event organizer if you don’t design your online event in a completely different way.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

How To Run A Successful Online Event

Here are our thoughts on how to think about designing and running events that work online; distilled from hundreds of hours of designing, delivering and watching online conferences.

Lessons Learned Running Our First Online Conference

In March 2020, we ran Business of Software Conference Europe as an online event – our first ever virtual conference. Even with the short timeframes involved in putting this together, and the significant distractions going on all around us, the conference was a resounding success, with attendees noting that the experience of the online event was remarkably close to an in-person event.

As ever, we focused on two principles:

• Learning new skills and ideas
• Meeting other smart people.

We learned a lot and there are definitely things we’ll iterate on at our upcoming online conference this September, BoS USA Online 2020, to make it even better. We’re also learning every day from other online events that help us all learn the things that work and the things that we can do to create a memorable, fun and valuable experience.

Here’s some of the things we learned that will help us to make BoS USA Online even better:

Claire Lew // CEO, Know Your Team

Video, Slides, & Transcript below