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!

Nandini Jammi // Co-Founder Check My Ads

Nandini has been immersed in the world of brand safety & digital advertising since 2016, when she began running Sleeping Giants, the social media campaign that alerted advertisers that their ads were funding hate speech on Breitbart News. Her efforts led to her being recognized by Business Insider as one of the industry leaders “fixing” digital advertising. DigiDay named her a DigiDay Changemaker. In 2019, Sleeping Giants won a Gold Cannes Lion Award for Best Social Media Campaign and a People’s Voice for Public Service and Activism Webby Award.

Video & Slides below

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Alex Osterwalder & Tendayi Viki // Strategyzer

Following on from their talk at Business of Software Conference USA Online 2020, Alex Osterwalder (Founder) and Tendayi Viki (Partner) joined BoS online for an interactive Q&A where they discussed how to evaluate your existing business model and how to find opportunities for innovation within it.

Watch the session

Poppy Gustafsson // Darktrace

Poppy is a co-founder and CEO of Darktrace, a world-leading AI company for cyber defence, named Europe’s ‘Fastest Growing Super Scale-up’ by Tech Tour in 2018. Poppy was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2019 in recognition of her services to cyber security.

In this talk from BoS Europe 2019, Poppy will discuss how Darktrace has grown to become one of the world’s fastest growing cyber AI company. She will share some of her experiences in helping to shape and scale a successful commercial strategy that has meant the company has grown incredibly quickly; from the outset, the intention was to establish a reputation in a key market before applying its AI know-how to other challenges, such as risk or compliance.

Poppy will also discuss how cyber security is an industry in crisis and how Darktrace is working to fill the gap by hiring bright graduates and training them on the job as well as using AI to do the heavy lifting.

Video, Sketchnote, & Slides below

John Snyder // Grapeshot

John Snyder started Grapeshot in a small office overlooking King’s Parade, right at the heart of the Cambridge tech cluster. While Cambridge is well known for the quality of its technology, many companies have struggled to turn their technology advantage into global commercial success. John was determined to do both in the global adtech market, not one that is traditionally associated with deep Cambridge tech.

In this talk from BoS Europe 2019, John talks about how he set about educating himself by learning from others and why he decided that his business had to have a global vision from the outset. He describes entering new markets with a relatively limited supply of capital which meant every new move could have been very costly. Ultimately, much of the success of the business was down to maintaining a clear company culture whilst operating across several continents and territories amidst different social cultures.

The company was acquired by Oracle Corporation in May 2018.

Video, Sketchnote, & Slides below

Ruth Everard // DragonMobility

Despite a severe physical disability, Ruth has a law degree from Oxford University, trained as a solicitor with one of the world’s largest law firms practicing in the City in hedge funds and private equity. She then went on to become managing director of Dragonmobility, the not-for-profit that gives to others the specialist powerchairs which made it all possible for her.

In this talk from BoS Europe 2019, Ruth shares some of her experience growing up with a severe physical disability that have led her to think very hard about her own goals, values and priorities in comparison to the energy they expend to achieve.

You will learn how to prioritise your goals and achievements in all aspects of your life by weighing up the effort necessary against the experience to be gained in pursuing them with more everyday, mainstream, examples.

Video & Sketchnote below

Dame Stephanie ‘Steve’ Shirley CH // Freelance Programmers

Dame Stephanie is 50 years ahead of her time. While remote work is becoming more popular now than ever before, Dame Stephanie’s company was remote only from the outset. No Slack, no Twitter, no World Wide Web! So how did she do it?

In this talk from BoS Europe 2019, Dame Stephanie discusses some of the lessons she’s learned in starting, building, growing and exiting one of Europe’s most successful companies. You will hear why some of her core values – trust, a belief in strong culture, valuing outputs over inputs, a sense of values and determination – are as critical to building a successful business today as they were in the jet age.

Video & Sketchnote below

Francesco D’Alessio // Keep Productive

Everyone has too much to do.

Luckily, there are an almost limitless number of tools that offer a solution that will help you reclaim control of your life. Unluckily, people often become less productive as they adopt new apps and tools that don’t fit with their individual work styles, work flows and habits.

Switching to-do list applications? Can’t make your mind up on a note-taker? Or just can’t quite stick with just one resource. This talk helps to break down a simple process on how to filter down your options and stick with the resource you choose for years to come. Save yourself time, effort and even money with these helpful approaches to matching software to your needs and goals.

Video, Slides, & Sketchnote below

Randy Silver // Motivate Design

How many times have you wondered if your company has prioritised the work that will actually solve your customer’s problems? Not the ones they tell you about – that’s easy. It’s the problems that they don’t talk about that will trip you up every time.

As product organisations, we’ve developed any number of frameworks, techniques and processes to get at this elusive knowledge, and then to proritise it correctly. In firm after firm, Randy Silver has seen the same problems crop up – then he discovered a new technique that generates genuine insight in as little as two weeks. Instead of wondering if you’re committing your teams to solving the right problems, the Insider Insight methodology ensures that you’re asking the right question.

In this talk from BoS Europe 2019, you will gain an understanding of why the discovery process is broken – but also how you can employ a new approach to fix it that will complement your existing practices.

Video, Sketchnote, & Slides below

April Dunford // Ambient Strategy

Startups often struggle to communicate the value of their products, particularly in sales meetings. From pitches that drown customers in a word-soup of features, to high-concept vision pitches that leave customers confused and sceptical – many companies struggle to connect authentically with customers in a way that generates deals. You need the Point of View pitch.

In this talk, April is going to teach you the difference between selling and helping customers buy. She will show you the different types of pitches to use and the pros & cons of each, and why Point of View pitches work so well.

Video, Slides, & Transcript below