Whitney O’Banner // Engineering Manager, Medium

Google famously published a leading reference for establishing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as a way to align teams and set short-term goals. In this BoSTalk, Whitney O’Banner (Engineering Manager, Medium) delves into which aspects of Google’s video should be embraced, which should be updated in line with the times, and which should be left in the ’90s.

Whitney leaves you with three ‘top tips’ for incorporating OKRs into your team, plus answers a few of the audiences hard-hitting question in the Q&A at the end of the talk.

This talk touches on how innovation can come from the bottom and that the upper hierarchy shouldn’t be so quick to shoot down ideas that come from grassroots. Marty Cagan (Founder, Silicon Valley Product Group and previous BoS speaker) recently published an article about OKRs which echos some of Whitney’s points about empowering teams and giving team objectives instead of individual objectives – BoS is often ahead of the curve – check out Marty’s post on svpg.com.

Video, Slides, Sketch Notes, and Transcript below

Rich Mironov, Smokejumper Product Executive

Rich Mironov gave a fantastic talk about Software Pricing at BoS Europe 2019. Yesterday, he joined Mark to answer questions from an audience both at our offices in Cambridge, and online.

Questions answered included:

• If I know how much money my product makes for each customer, how much of that value should I capture?
• How do I understand the pricing units for my software?
• Who should own pricing? Product/Marketing/Sales/CEO?
• How do I move upmarket from relatively low SaaS pricing to big enterprise sales?

Watch the Q&A below

Isa Watson, Founder & CEO, Squad

With a background in chemistry and pharmacology and being an MIT MBA with a focus on finance and economics, Isa’s corporate career started at Pfizer where she was a chemist and data scientist before moving to JP Morgan Chase. Whilst VP, Digital Product & Strategy for Small Business at JP Morgan, Isa observed that the bank branches that were most profitable were ones with the most engaged people.

She took the leap into the world of entrepreneurship when she founded Squad in 2015 having seen an opportunity to help companies understand how to do this better but it was a huge career pivot that saw her leave corporate life to go it alone and pursue this.

She will talk about some of the ways that companies can provide a better environment for humans to work and share how she came to realize that in her startup, she had to bring her ‘best self’ to the business every day – no one else in the business has more impact on the morale and well-being of the team than the CEO.

Video, Slides & Transcript below

Join us on Thursday 20th February for a live Q&A with Rich Mironov on Software Pricing

4PM (GMT) // 11AM (ET) // 8AM (PT)

Register for the Online Q&A

Join us in person in Cambridge, UK

Software is intangible: it doesn’t have weight or size or per-unit manufacturing costs.  But if we’re in the software business, we have to assign units and prices that reflect our value to customers.  And we should be mapping out software pricing strategy before we start development, not the day before product launch.

In his BoS Europe 2019 talk, Rich Mironov – a 40 year Silicon Valley veteran – covers some software pricing essentials
•    Computing (estimating) customer value
•    Pricing units, or what we count and how we scale
•    Segmentation, pricing/value tiers and how upsell works

This live Q&A will give you the chance to ask Rich directly some of the questions you have regarding software pricing and helping you to navigate through the darkness of packages and pricing structures.

If you’re based in Cambridge, UK you can join us at The Bradfield Centre. We’ll be showing a screening of Rich’s talk on the topic at 3pm, after which Rich will be joining us via video link for the Q&A. You’ll get an opportunity to jump on camera and ask Rich your question too!

Register for the Online Q&A

Join us live in Cambridge, UK

15 Talks / 5 FAQs / The BoS Podcast

At every Business of Software Conference we record all the speakers’ presentations so that you can learn from the array of talks on offer to our attendees. We release new talks regularly right here on our blog for you to enjoy free – now and forever. We also welcome back the BoS Podcast – streaming the top BoS Talks straight to your device.  Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor.fm, and more – don’t forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts recommending us to the world!

Below is a round-up of the best SaaS content we’ve released over the past quarter. You’ll find:

• 15 talks from our expert speakers
• 5 BoSFAQs – Answers to some questions we get regularly asked
• Fresh episodes of the BoS Podcast

Below you’ll find great talks from April Dunford (Author, Obviously Awesome), Bob Moesta (Founder, The Re-Wired Group), Laura Roeder (Founder, MeetEdgar), and many many more.

Enjoy these brilliant resources for SaaS entrepreneurs

Professor Clayton Christensen | An Appreciation.

We’re very sad to hear that Professor Clayton Christensen has died at the tragically early age of 67. He was a mensch.

He left a dent in the universe and leaves a hole that cannot be replaced. One of the most lovely people and someone that has had a huge influence on many of us in the Business of Software community. Our thoughts are with his family and many friends.

His life measured well on every dimension.

The Email Game: The Key to Happy Customers // Rahul Vohra, Superhuman

How can you find fun in the usually mundane? Do you design your business software like game designers design games? Rahul Vohra founded Superhuman as the antidote to boring email platforms.  Being able to do things faster, without distraction, and with a goal of inbox zero makes you change your perspective on emails.

Rahul has spoken before at Business of Software in USA 2018 about the product-market fit engine and creating something people love to use. In this talk at USA 2019, Rahul talks us through the different aspects to think about when designing business software and how to make an everyday task exciting and surprising for the user.

Video, Slides and Transcript below

“To be in this incredibly supportive community means everything.”

No, I’m not just making up some ego-massaging marketing guff here – these are real quotes from attendees of Business of Software Conference USA 2019.

BoS USA has and will always be about helping our attendees grow their businesses. We do this in two simple ways:

1. We put software entrepreneurs and practitioners on stage who have smart things to say and insightful stories to tell about building great, sustainable software businesses.
2. We allow plenty of time for you to meet and chat with the other 300 software entrepreneurs and leaders who attend the conference.

But does it work? Is it actually different to other conferences?

Well these people certainly thing so – watch this video to hear why you should attend BoS USA 2020…

#BoSFAQ – Your questions answered by our expert speakers

BoSFAQ: Hiring Outside Your Network and Hiring Remote

We like to help all our followers with a full compliment of educational and insightful talks from our previous Business of Software conferences.

With over 200 talks to watch – for free – there is something for everyone; the first step is knowing your problem. That’s where #BoSFAQ comes in. Here we answer your questions, with the help of our expert speakers.

If you’re new to BoS you should sign up for our regular, guaranteed content-filled, updates here. When you do, you will receive an email to confirm your subscription. Once confirmed, you can reply to the email with your biggest challenge. We will handpick some talks that might help you address it.

This week we’ve been asked:

Q| How do we ‘Cold Hire’ and find out more about Remote Hiring?

April Dunford, Founder, Ambient Strategy

Sometimes it takes a system design engineer and some cat gifs to really help you see what you’re doing and this funny and informative talk from Boston in 2019 has both! In this BoS Talk April shows you how important positioning is to your product and how you can be doing yourself a great injustice just by positioning incorrectly.

April is an expert marketing practitioner turned executive consultant and author who helps technology companies make complicated products easy for customers to understand and love.

Video, Slides, & Transcript below

What To Expect In The Tech Industry In 2020

For several years, the overriding narrative in tech has been about funding; venture funding, IPOs, and M&A. The obsession with ‘Unicorn’ creation has spread from the US and has become an obsession in the European tech media too.

‘Success’ has become measured by the size of an exit, often with very little thought or consideration to the outcomes for early investors (often washed out by the time a liquidity event happens) or the founders (there are plenty of founders with company exits of hundreds of millions, or billion $ headline exits that leave with very little, or in some cases, nothing).

Leaving aside the lack of financial success in many cases for both founders and the teams they have built, there is increasingly more talk of the effects that driving or riding the rocket ship can have on relationships, mental health and quality of life.

So my prediction for 2020 is this…

2010-2019: The 5 Most Watched Talks From Business of Software Conferences

As I hope you know by now, you can watch over 200 talks from Business of Software online for free. We think it’s probably the best collection of talks about building and growing great software companies available.

Here at Business of Software we often get asked what our favourite BoS talk is. We think that’s an unfair question – our conferences are like our children, and we love them all equally! Having said that, I love a list – and it feels wrong not to celebrate some of the fantastic talks across our conferences over the past decade.

So we’re joining with the great throng of Best-Of-The-Decade lists, with the 5 BoS talks that the internet hive-mind has watched the most over the past 10 years.

Without Further Ado…

#BoSFAQ – Your questions, answered by our expert speakers

We like to help all our subscribers with a full catalogue of interesting and insightful talks from our previous Business of Software conferences.

With over 200 talks to watch there is something for everyone – the first step is knowing your problem; that’s where #BoSFAQ comes in. Here we answer your questions, with the help of our expert speakers. If this is your first time on the site, you should sign up for our regular, guaranteed content-filled, updates here. When you do, you will receive an email to confirm your subscription. Once confirmed, you can reply to the email with your biggest challenge. We will hand pick some talks that might help you address it.

This week we’ve been asked:

Q | How do companies adapt for growth and find their next breakout product?

#BoSFAQ – Your questions, answered by our expert speakers

We like to help all our subscribers with a full catalogue of interesting and insightful talks from our previous Business of Software conferences.  With over 200 talks to watch there is something for everyone – the first step is knowing your problem; that’s where #BoSFAQ comes in. Here we answer your questions, with the help of our expert speakers.

This week we’ve been asked:

Q | Where do I start with jobs-to-be-done?

Bob Moesta, Founder, The ReWired Group

How do you see innovation and how do you harness it effectively to make it work? How do people learn, and how can they work better? Every innovator comes across daily problems that they don’t know how to answer or where to even start thinking about the answer.

In this fast-paced talk from BoS USA 2018, jobs-to-be-done expert and lifelong innovator Bob Moesta helps give you the skills to make all your innovation outcomes more predictable, and successful. Bob has honed these key skills from his life working in everything from automotive, weapons systems, food, private equity, homebuilding, construction software, and more.

Video, slides, and transcript below

The Accidental and Deliberate Growth of Shopify

Shopify is now a $39 billion market cap business listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on the dreaded, ‘Black Friday’ this year, Shopify merchants made over $900 million worth of sales.

In a recent interview with Underscore.vc, Tobi Lutke, the founder and CEO, shared some of the things that made him change his view of the business from a lifestyle business, to one that became venture funded and then listed on the public markets. It has become one of the most successful and significant ecommerce platforms of the past decade. He discusses how he came to realize that his approach to running the business was becoming a significant block to growth.

In this context, it is fascinating to watch his Business of Software Conference USA 2011 talk: How to make sure your business is on the right side of history through code & culture.

Even then, he seemed determined that he wanted Shopify to have a lasting impact and legacy on the world.

The Accidental and Deliberate Growth of Shopify.

While the early growth of Shopify was in many ways accidental, there came a time when, for Shopify, deliberate growth was required.

A BoS Autopsy on Black Friday

Your inboxes have no doubt been flooded for most of November with “Pre-Black Friday Discounts”, “register now for early access to Black Friday deal” and my personal favourite “#000000Friday”.  So why does every retailer and business across the globe try to make Black Friday happen?

Cashing in on massive hype is not a new or ground-breaking idea in the retail world – ‘Boxing Day Sales’ is a very familiar term to us in the UK despite sales often starting late-November and continuing through to New Year. Recent rises in online shopping has been forcing high street shops to reduce prices earlier and earlier as they no longer have the upper hand in controlling consumer purchasing.  A recent Which? report shows that 48% of items were sold at a lower price after Black Friday and that 61% were actually cheaper before their Black Friday sale price.

How to combat Black Friday

Stephen Allott, Seedcamp

There are three main aspects to sales: Planning, Selling, and Tools.  This talk from Stephen Allott takes you through the journey of planning for success and which rules and tools can help and hinder your organization. From generating good leads, to spotting good sales people and how to motivate them to be better.

Over 30 years Stephen has seen the evolution of software and tech companies with a fascinating career spanning computers, strategy, software , universities, chairing 8 companies, Government, and most recently in AI gaining a wealth of experience and some great insights to share.

Video, Slides, and Transcript below

Black Friday Sucks.

In the US, it was created as an opportunity to sell more stuff people don’t want to people who can’t afford it to while away some time while your at home with your family in a turkey coma and your critical faculties are severely weakened. Retailers dump unwanted stuff, at prices noone was prepared to pay for in the first place then add a DISCOUNT!! Blurgh. No thanks. This ‘tradition’ has spread to the UK and beyond now and this is the season that all those things you bought online or in-store come back to bite you in the inbox (or spam box), as marketeers go ‘MAD!’ with their BLACK FRIDAY DEALS!!!!

As everyone does it, we thought we had to, but we think these artificial festivals of consumerism suck.

Our Black Friday Deal is different.

Black Friday Sucks. So…

#BoSFAQ – Your questions, answered by our expert speakers.

We like to help all our subscribers with a full catalogue of interesting and insightful talks from our previous Business of Software conferences.  With over 200 talks to watch there is something for everyone – the first step is knowing your problem; that’s where #BoSFAQ comes in. Here we answer your questions, with the help of our expert speakers.

This week the question is:

Q | How do I scale my hiring efforts during rapid company growth?