JASON COHEN | JOEL GASCOIGNE | CHRIS SAVAGE & CHRIS LAVIGNE | AMIR SALIHEFENDIC | CLAIRE LEW | BRUCE MCCARTHY | CHRIS MELE & BILL SPRUILL | GEORGIANA LAUDI | PIERRE CHAMBERLAND | CHIKA EMEBO & MARK STEPHENS | KRISTIE JONES | JOE LEECH
LIGHTNING TALKS:
JOHN KNOX | IVAN BARAJAS VARGAS | ART KOENIG | RAJ MAHAJAN | DAVID ROBISON
Escaping the Growth Ceiling: The Hidden Forces Capping Your Growth and How to Break Past Them
Jason Cohen, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer, WP Engine
Jason shows why your growth slows and shares proven approaches to consider when growth tapers including: expand into adjacencies, a conscious shift in focus from explore to execute, ruthless prioritization, multi-channel risk mitigation, and customer concentration control.
Navigating a Multi-Year Decline to New All-Time-Highs
Joel Gascoigne, Founder & CEO, Buffer
Joel shares his journey navigating Buffer’s decline and the monumental effort it took to turn it around. Joel covers: embracing differentiation to thrive long-term, missteps and early warning signs of an emerging plateau, what it feels like to be in free fall, going inward to rediscover purpose and seek a new path, steering in a new direction during a decline, strengthening culture in the midst of a turnaround, and achieving all-time-highs our own way.
Building Beyond the Investment Next Round
Chris Savage & Chris Lavigne, Wistia
Chris Savage and Chris Lavigne updates us on their journey steering a profitable, independent company through shifting markets and investor pressures. Packed with real stories and practical takeaways, this session will inspire you to rethink scale, culture, and success. If you’re building software and want to grow on your own terms, this is a talk you won’t want to miss.
Invisible, Essential, Inevitable: AI Where It Matters
Amir Salihefendić, CEO Founder, Doist
Amir outlines practical principles for riding the AI wave and ensuring your product and organization evolve as LLMs become much more powerful. Their deep AI integration at Doist has not only reduced staffing needs but also sharpened our focus on hiring adaptable, mission-driven individuals. The key takeaway for founders is clear: embrace AI, lead by example, and build leaner, smarter companies prepared for the future.
The Blind Spots That Break Us: What Leaders Are Missing Most in the Age of AI
Claire Lew, Founder & CEO, Canopy
Claire Lew shares lessons from 24 months of working closely with CEOs and executive teams at software and AI companies. She highlights the most common blind spots she’s seen where leaders have succeeded, where they’ve stumbled, and what we can learn. You’ll leave with practical ways to help your team perform at the highest level, and to lead with clarity and confidence in an AI-accelerated world.
Evolving Clear Strategy from Emerging Vision
Bruce McCarthy, Founder, Product Culture
Bruce explores a critical decision CEOs need to make – who maintains strategic alignment? Bruce demonstrates why this is a critical function and offer a clear framework to understand and define emerging leadership roles before strategic confusion stalls growth. He also explains why the right CPO can be your secret weapon in the ongoing quest to keep focused.
The Price of AI
Chris Mele, Software Pricing Partners and Bill Spruill, Global Data Consortium
This discussion aims to set you on the right path and offer pricing strategy tips to help you understand how to capture the value your new AI features deliver to your customers. In a fast-moving world, AI is a disruptive technology, you will want to ensure that the decisions you take today will set you up for longer term success while enabling you to pivot quickly if the market shifts.
AI’s Impact on SaaS GTM Strategy
Georgiana Laudi, Co-Founder, Forget the Funnel
From the rise of AI-first startups to the challenges facing legacy SaaS, Georgiana dives into why clear positioning, deep customer insight, and strategic use of AI are now essential. Learn what’s working, what’s hype, and how to avoid being commoditized. Whether you’re racing ahead or trying to catch up, this session helps you make smarter, more grounded decisions in the age of AI.
Just Make Everyone A Shareholder
Pierre Chamberland, CEO & Founder, Netgovern
What if you made every employee a shareholder? Pierre shares his unconventional journey building Netgovern, a SaaS company where 90% of employees owned stock.
When Four Worlds Collide: Turning Generational Diversity into your Superpower
Chika Emebo & Mark Stephens, IDR Solutions
For the first time ever we have 4 generations in the workplace (Boomers, Gen X, Millenials and Zoomers), all with very different formative experiences, skillsets, ways of working and fears. Lots of scope for misunderstandings and a recipe for disaster! And yet mixing very different individuals effectively is the basis of resilient and high functioning teams. All you are actually missing is the Map to get there… Proud Zoomer Chika Emebo is going to fill in the missing gaps for you with some assistance from avid Gen Xer Mark Stephens.
Overcoming Founder Advantage: Building a Sales Team That Scales
Kristie Jones, Sales Enchantress
Kristie shares some practical, founder-tested frameworks, not sales-guru fluff, that will help you unlock how to build a sales structure that will scale. She walks us through: different approaches to scaling the sales function in your company beyond the first hire, the question you must ask yourself BEFORE you hire, how to hire the right first salesperson for you, and how your role as founder changes post-hire.
Designing Your Ideal Leadership Team
Joe Leech, Founder, Mr Joe
You’ll learn how the best CEOs think about people as the beating heart of the business – not cost centres or risks. How can you create a team that moves faster, makes better decisions, and doesn’t rely on you to be everywhere. A practical playbook for: leading with clarity, especially when things get hard, moving faster by optimising your top team, and knowing when you are the bottleneck – and fixing it.
Lightning Talks
The Introvert’s Guide to Networking: The Hidden Growth Lever
John Knox, CEO Founder, Moving Average
John will change your mind about the value of networking. He explains why networking can be a hidden cheat code for you and share proven ideas to help you expand your influence, create lucrative partnerships, discover new opportunities, and gain new market insights.
Top 15 Reasons the Vibes are Off With Vibe Coding
Ivan Barajas Vargas, CEO Founder, MuukTest
By laying out the top 15 reasons the “vibes are off,” Ivan’s aim is to spark a more honest, nuanced conversation about what’s working, what’s failing, and where the risks really lie. You will hear clear, practical takeaways to help engineers and leaders separate hype from reality.
Land and Expand? Oh, Really Now.
Art Koenig, CEO Founder, xGEL Data Systems
One of the lessons Art learned the hard way is that ‘Land and Expand’ generally has an implication of undue speed. Sometimes speed ist good, but sometimes a ‘Plant and Grow Slow’ strategy is a better one to adopt. In this Lightning Talk, you will learn about a different way.
Fragile Deals, Enduring Lessons
Raj Mahajan, Founder, Jaan Capital
Raj shares his journey through growing a company, to a busted sale, unexpected crises, and a creative exit to highlight the habits and mindsets that matter most. You’ll learn how to navigate the pressures that come with exits, how to factor opportunity cost into every decision, and to reflect on their why.
How to Hire Your Next Employee
David Robison, Founder CEO, Design Master Software
David shares the hiring process he has built for his growing software company. First-time hirers can use it as a starting point; experienced hirers can stack it up against their own and take away what works.
