Seth Godin spoke at Business of Software Conference USA last year to share some of the many lessons that he has learned in his 33 years in the software industry.
You can watch the talk here.
Bruce McCarthy has sensed a movement in Product Companies – a movement away from ‘how do we sell more of what we’ve already built?’ and towards ‘what new value can we provide?’. He calls this movement ‘Product Culture’. In this talk, Bruce argues that this more entrepreneurial approach walks all over a more corporate ‘Execution Culture’, and outlines the 4 key aspects of a Product Culture:
Bruce will also be speaking and leading a workshop at BoS USA 2018 (1-3 October, Boston MA). Find out more here.
We’re profiling the companies that are supporting BoS USA. Today, meet Shield GEO – your new best friend if you’re a remote working company.
We’re profiling the companies that are supporting BoS USA. Today, meet Bambora – the customer-focused payment experience company (with a purple giraffe mascot).
Well, here’s your chance.
You have 7 days to submit a Lightning Talk for #BoS2018: 1-3 October, in Boston MA.
The format for Lightning Talks is difficult: you have 7.5 minutes, and a slide deck that advances automatically every 30 seconds, to communicate something useful to the BoS Community. Tricky – but very, very impressive if you execute it well. And hey – all Lightning Talk speakers get a free pass to the conference. Worth a shot? Absolutely.
And you could be one of them this year.
Thanks to our wonderful sponsors and attendees, there are a number of 99% reduced tickets for #BoS2018 available now. These tickets are available to deserving members of the software community who, for whatever reason, wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend Business of Software Conference. A BoS Scholarship Ticket gets you access to the whole Conference. BoS Scholars are not singled out at the conference. You attend, just like everyone else – it’s a level playing field.
“Who you hire will make the single biggest difference to your business” – that’s the premise Bridget Harris opens her talk from BoS2017 with. As founder of a SaaS company, Bridget knows this first hand, and wants to help you make sure you hire the right people for your business.
In this talk, Bridget lays out a framework for making sure you hire the right people. Create a company that you want to work for, and aim to hire people who want similar outcomes as you – then document it, describe it, defend it, talk about it, share it, and make decisions based on it.
They might not have the most devices but they are far and away the most profitable handset manufacturer.
Copy is your online salesperson – that’s what Joanna Wiebe believes. The text you commit to on your website and in your emails is the front door to your business, and you better make sure it’s doing its job. In this talk at Business of Software Conference USA 2017, Joanna looks back to some old school copywriters for tips to use to help your SaaS stand out, including the Seven Sweeps you should give your copy before you ship it.
We had a great conversation yesterday with clinical psychologist Sherry Walling. Sherry’s been working with Entrepreneurs for over 10 years – you may have heard her talk at BoS USA last year. We discussed a whole bunch of really interesting topics including:
Remember, ‘It Was Never a Dress’? It’s one of the most memorable Lightning Talks we have had a Business of Software Conference over the years.
Packed with humor, thought provoking ideas and with a powerful message, Tania Katan inspired us to look at something from a different direction.
Tania is coming back…
Many thanks to everyone who joined us for our Hangout with Ryan Singer last Thursday. A thoroughly interesting conversation was had – I always come away from conversations with people from Basecamp with my head buzzing with ideas. If you didn’t get a chance to see it live, you can catch a replay here. We talked about Basecamp’s Hill Chart feature, why Ryan users ‘Hoppers’ not Roadmaps, and how to use JTBD effectively in customer interviews.
In 2016, Zack Urlocker spoke at BoS USA about scaling to a $ billion and beyond. He had done it before at ZenDesk (COO), MySQL (VP Product) and more and was then COO of Duo Security. Today Cisco announced they had bought the Michigan based company for $2.35 billion. This is a talk you will want to watch. Again and again.
He spoke to us in this interview just after his company, Rapportive, was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012. It’s still valid today.
Rahul studied Computer Science at Cambridge University before moving to San Francisco to build Rapportive. I caught up with him on a visit back to his alma mater. He shared some great advice about how to raise money and build a useful network when he moved to the Valley.
Dr Sherry Walling is a licensed clinical psychologist with a PhD in Psychology and MA in Psychology & Theology. She has been working with entrepreneurs for over 10 years – ever since her husband launched his first startup. At BoS USA 2017, Sherry gave an important talk about how to avoid burnout as a founder.
At the time of writing, Wistia have turned down the offer to sell the company and have instead taken on $17m of debt – seemingly a strange move. Why? Because Wistia are in it for the long run – they want to run their business their way. Last year at BoS Conference USA, Co-Founder & CEO Chris Savage talked about the process of scaling Wistia over the past couple of years, including some fascinating insights into how to communicate well internally in a growing company, and the importance of delegating as your company grows.
I apologize to David Meerman Scott for my unforgivable outburst on Twitter on Friday evening.
I thought I had deleted the tweet soon afterwards and did not have access to Internet over the weekend so had not realized it was still online until Monday am. It should not have been sent and does not reflect either Business of Software Conference’s, or my own views. It is not how we go about our business.
This post has been sent to David in draft form prior to publishing and he has kindly accepted my apology and agreed that we can share it publicly.
Deleting doesn’t undo however and I want to take time to both apologize and try to at least explain what happened. Whilst in no way excusing my actions, I hope that it might provide some context.
Yesterday we sat down to chat with Wildbit’s Natalie Nagele about some of the interesting ways her company runs. Now a year into their 32-hour work week experiment, Natalie talked about how it’s worked in practice and why she’s planning this for life. We also discussed how their semi-remote team works, how she and co-founder and husband Chris re-focussed on why they were running Wildbit, and why BoS is her favourite conference (couldn’t resist!).
We’re profiling the companies that are supporting BoS USA. Today, meet Logi Analytics who make building data dashboards easy.
“One of the first (of many lessons) I have learnt from BoS is that telling stories is a much better way to sell you something than just bombarding you with facts and figures. Sadly the credit for that insight goes to Paul Kenny, not me.