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.
In August 2020, HotJar publically dropped the Trump campaign and the GOP account (before it was cool to do so). It was not only an unprecedented move for a tech company, it’s an incredible case study in how to manage a social media crisis in this age of extremes. In this talk from BoS USA Online 2020, Nandini discusses the background to the story and the actions the company’s leadership took to address a challenge that most software company CEOs have never seriously considered: booting users who violate their Acceptable Use Policies. Nandini explores the role of Acceptable Use Policies & ToS as a tool for choosing your course of action.
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.
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.
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.
When you sign up for our excellent newsletter, you don’t just get access to first sight of new talks, invitations to exclusive hangouts with speakers and smart people and all the community goodness, we ask you if there is something we can help you with to help you navigate the over 300 talks from BoS Conference collected over 15 years from some of the smartest people in the industry. We try to find some particularly relevant content to help you think about your challenge.
This is a reply I got recently from a new subscriber:
> So hit reply and let me know the problem you’re trying to solve, and I’ll be in touch with some top advice from some of the software world’s brightest minds.
> Don’t believe me? Put me to the test…
I’ll take you on on that one:
On the topic of the Management of Innovation: Whose role is it in modern businesses, is it concentrated on a particular function or distributed amongst people? Any best practice? Insights?
What do you have in stock? Any interesting speakers in that sphere?
If you’ve ever worked with someone you didn’t trust, you will know why trust is important in the workplace.
Teams that don’t trust each other don’t work well together. Morale, productivity, staff turnover and outputs suffer. Much of the talk around ‘trust’ in business is woolly, misunderstood and lacks clear and actionable frameworks for you to make things better. Drawing on personal experience and a lot of study, Gareth will help you to appreciate how trust issues may be limiting your company’s growth and the role you might be playing in destroying trust.
In this talk delivered at both BoS Conferences in 2019, Gareth shares some concrete and clear steps you can take to build a culture of trust with your peers, your investors, your team and your company.
Paul Kenny has been a regular attendee at Business of Software Conference since it started in 2007 and has spoken several times before, and for good reason. Over the last 25 years, he has helped to develop salespeople and sales managers working in media, technology and the professional services sectors.
In this talk from BoS Europe 2019, Paul will help you understand and conquer the challenges of scaling sales teams rapidly with a focus on the challenge of getting new hires up and running quickly and effectively. He’ll share some of the important lessons he’s learned as he has helped software companies to recruit, develop and manage their sales teams.
Radhika Dutt is an entrepreneur and product leader who has participated in four acquisitions as a result of the products she built and advises organisations from high-tech startups to government agencies on building radical products (ones that create a fundamental change instead of optimising the status quo). She co-founded Radical Product Thinking as a movement of leaders creating vision-driven change. Radhika graduated from MIT with an SB and M.Eng in Electrical Engineering, and speaks nine languages while learning her tenth.
In this talk from BoS USA Online, Radhika talks about where iteration goes wrong, why Lean and Agile fall short, and how to diagnose the most common product diseases and overcome them. There are some great discussion points and tools covered int his talk that you can use in your team too.
Should you rethink your sales process from the buyer’s perspective?*
For most of us, sales means reciting features, benefits, pressuring customers into purchasing. Selling feels icky. It’s not our fault – that’s how most selling is done. There’s a better way. Bob Moesta has taken Jobs-to-be-Done theory and flipped it to apply it to sales.
Before giving this talk Bob asked, “Why are there no sales professors?”. There are lots of practices but really no underlying theory. We need to learn how to think like a salesperson.
In this talk, delivered at the end of BoS USA Online, Bob talks about how to help people to buy, without selling. He takes us through the six steps of a customers journey from ‘first thought’ to ‘on-going use and building habits’. Knowing this journey can help you to position your product differently and help your customers buy.
TOP TIP: Recreate the Business Of Software Conference Travel Experience.
We can’t wait to see you on Monday for the first BoS Conference USA Online. We know that some people miss the thrill of business travel but the good news is that you can recreate that part of the experience – at home!
Here’s how…
And talking of taking part at home, the best news of all is that everyone who is taking part this year, won’t have to travel at all. Don’t miss the talks and the talk.
Don’t worry about missing your flight, worry about missing your chance to spend some quality time with some awesome people.
We’re delighted to welcome April Dunford, Jason Fried, Bob Moesta, Alex Osterwalder, Rich Mironov, and Tendayi Viki back to the BoS stage – albeit an online one this year.
BoS Speakers are chosen because we believe what they have to share will help software entrepreneurs make a real difference in their businesses. There’s still time to bag a ticket to BoS Conference USA Online, 21-23 September – and with no hotel or flights to book, it’s easier than ever.
As we look forward to their talks this year, we’re taking a look back at some of their previous talks. Read on below to find great talks about:
How to position your product to make it obviously awesome
The brightest software entrepreneurs from across the world will be meeting online to meet with their peers, discuss the big issues around running a software business, and participate in interactive sessions led by experts including April Dunford, Bob Moesta, Alex Osterwalder, and many more.
Every year at Business of Software Conference, the generosity of our supporters allows us to offer full conference tickets to deserving entrepreneurs and leaders who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend the event.
This year is no different – a huge thanks to our supporters:
In a recent conversation with Bob Moesta as we discussed his session and talk at this year’s BoS Conference USA online, 21-23 September, we talked about how we have adapted to work in a virtual format, he asked,
“What would happen if we didn’t do BoS Conference?”
A great question. One we have considered. Like Bob, we reached the same conclusion…
Not doing BoS Conference is not an option.
Here’s why, with some insights into Bob’s thinking about the challenges, opportunities and the purpose of an event like ours.
We’re all guilty. The world is moving too fast and we all have to deal with customers, employees, family, friends, investors, events, unexpected problems, working from home (a very different thing to remote working), unicorns, smart phones, 24x7x365 availability.
Do you honestly feel you’re in control of your life? If you do and can share the secret, we want to hear from you – please…
Step back for one minute. Think about what you have done in the last week. How much of the stuff you did was really necessary? What made you, your team, your family, your friends, your customers, happier, healthier or wiser?
View from the Seaport, the day after BoS 2019. A moment for quiet contemplation as the sun comes up.
After attending and running several online events and conferences, we’ve experienced the positives and negatives of the virtual event world. As we drew up the schedule for BoS Conference USA Online, we wanted to build an event that takes advantage of the benefits of running an event virtually, while still feeling like a Business of Software Conference and not a series of lectures.
A good online event has 3 key elements:
Connecting with your fellow attendees in a meaningful and thoughtful way.
Listening to experts sharing new ideas and thinking about what they mean to you.
Engaging in stimulating conversations about topics you are passionate about.
There must be a good balance of all 3 to make an online event excellent. For BoS Conference Online this September, we’ve chosen to approach the schedule like a menu. There are 3 courses, each of which complements the others to create one excellent whole meal.
We talked with Jason Fried, founder of Basecamp and Hey, in advance of his session at Business of Software USA Online to get some of the important but unnecessary stuff out of the way in advance. We don’t think hearing him talk about the background story is going to be as interesting as digging into some questions and conversations about the really interesting stuff for the entrepreneurs and software people who are taking part. A fascinating conversation covering topics including strategy at Basecamp, launching their new email service Hey, thinking about products, remote work, online conferences as platforms and lots of other interesting things.
We’re sharing some of the conversation here, split into three sections for ease – we cover a lot (or you can read it all in one go below):
Of course, there is plenty more to talk about and we’re looking forward to spending time with Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, neither of whom are short of opinions, to delve deeper at Business of Software Conference Online 21-23 September.
You should be in the (Zoom) room where it happens.
Humans are horrible at risk management! How are we even still around? We’re now the dominant species on the planet. Why? How? Andy shares his thoughts on why humanity has significant advantages in making rapid, generally correct risk choices.
You will learn:
How risk choices that appear unreasonable from the outside may not be.
To identify the hidden factors in someone’s risk choice that most influence it.
How to help guide people to risk choices that you find more favorable.
We talked with Jason Fried, founder of Basecamp and Hey, in advance of his session at Business of Software USA Online to get some of the important but unnecessary stuff out of the way in advance.
Part 3 of 3 – here we share Jason’s thoughts on the evolution of work and industry post Covid, why designing for platforms is important and the differences between office/remote work and physical/online events. Also, some nice things to say about your favorite conference.
How Covid changes work and industries, designing for platforms – you are here.
Of course, there is plenty more to talk about and we’re looking forward to spending time with Jason and David Heinemeier Hansson, neither of whom are short of opinions, to delve deeper at Business of Software Conference Online 21-23 September.
You should be in the (Zoom) room where it happens.
