Schedule

Schedule Outline, Talk Topics, & Workshops

Business of Software Conference is a 3-day single-track conference for Founders, CXOs, and Emerging Leaders in Software and SaaS companies, hosted at The Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center in Boston, MA. Over 3 days there are:

• 14 1-hour sessions – 45-minute talks with time for Q&A. Each talk is given by an expert in their field with something valuable to say. Sponsors can never, ever pay their way onto the stage – BoS talks are renowned for their quality (judge for yourself – our vast library of talks is available here), and that’s the way it’s going to stay.
• The legendary BoS Hallway Track. You’re in a room with 400 other Software leaders – people who do what you do, all of whom are looking to learn and pass on things that they’ve learned. The quality of the people you’ll meet is unrivalled, and the things you’ll learn from them will be as important as the things you learn in the sessions.
• Opportunities to chat with Speakers. Not only is there ample time for Q&A after each session, Speakers stay for the whole conference – meaning you can grab them for a chat afterwards. You are as likely to sit next to a speaker at lunch than anyone else.

Schedule Outline

Sunday 15th September

• 19.00 – Pre-Conference Drinks & Registration.

Monday 16th September

• 08.00 – Registration & Full Breakfast provided.
• 09.00 – Conference begins. Sessions & Networking breaks throughout the morning.
• 12.30 – Full Buffet Lunch provided with Birds of a Feather Discussion Tables.
• 14.00 – Conference continues.
• 18.00 – Networking Dinner.
• 21.00 – End of Day.

Tuesday 17th September

• 08.00 – Full Breakfast provided.
• 09.00 – Conference begins. Sessions & Networking breaks throughout the morning.
• 12.30 – Full Buffet Lunch provided with Birds of a Feather Discussion Tables.
• 14.00 – Conference continues.
• 18.00 – End of Day.

Wednesday 18th September

• 08.00 – Full Breakfast provided.
• 09.00 – Conference begins. Sessions & Networking breaks throughout the morning.
• 12.30 – End of Conference. Boxed lunch provided.
• 13.00 – Workshops begin – for Workshop Ticket holders only.
• 16.00 – Workshops end.

Talk Topics

These are the currently announced speakers for BoS USA 2019. Speakers are announced every couple of weeks, and will appear here.

Rahul Vohra is the Founder & CEO of Superhuman, the world’s fastest email experience. Last year at BoS USA, Rahul’s talk on The Product-Market Fit Engine, in which he proposed a method to measure and optimize for PMF, changed the way many attendees think about product. This year, Rahul is speaking about Superhuman’s unique and highly effective approach to Customer Onboarding. Instead of accepting the convention of self-service, they’ve developed a novel strategy with live concierge onboardings that creates power users, increases retention, drives virality and fosters real human connection.

You’ll learn: why Superhuman onboardings work — and what you can do to take a similar approach yourself.

We operate in markets that are insanely crowded, and struggle to reach customers that are overwhelmed with choices. Positioning is more important than ever yet most companies fail to strategically choose a market position for their products. In this talk April will show you how to assess your own positioning and what to do if it’s weak. She will walk you through a process for positioning around your strengths and how to strategically choose a market context that makes those strengths obvious to customers. Lastly she will show a series of examples of startups that unlocked rapid revenue growth through a strategic shift in positioning.

You’ll learn: a process to ensure your product is positioned in a way that customers easily spot its strengths.

If you are like most leaders, you got to where you are because you are good at making decisions. You can quickly go from strategy to execution. You know exactly what should be done next. But for most of us, this strength can become a weakness. When we make all the output decisions (e.g. what to build, what programs to roll out, how a process should work), our company’s solutions are only as good as we are. To avoid this trap, instead of telling our teams what to do, we need to tell them what outcomes we expect them to drive. It’s a subtle, but powerful shift.

You’ll learn: How your role changes and your team performs better when you manage by outcomes.

You need to work like crazy, sacrifice time with family, do whatever it is takes to get your first reference customers in enterprise software… The 24x7x365 narrative is antiquated and false. Thompson Aderinkomi’s experiences as a serial entrepreneur have taught him to ask the right questions. At BoS 2019, he’ll be Busting Some Myths About Building A Company. Thompson is co-founder and CEO of Nice Healthcare.

You’ll learn: how to ask the questions that are right for you and how to grow a successful business with a better attitude.

Alex will discuss how you can manage a portfolio of products successfully. How can you invent new business models (explore), improve existing ones (exploit), and manage them all across the organization (manage)? How should you visualize your business model portfolio, in order to be prepared for the future?

You’ll learn: how to manage and improve the businesses and products you already have, understand how much profit existing business models generate and point out any synergies/conflicts between your models.

Rita’s talk will provide an overview of 8 practices that leaders can utilize to increase their awareness of shifts in the business environment. With technology changing at such a pace, how can you spot pending inflection points – and more importantly, how can you ensure you stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on them?

You’ll learn: useful tools to help you stay on the right side of future markets and be prepared for upcoming inflection points.

Steli Efti is one of the most renowned sales leaders in Silicon Valley, having advised hundreds of startups on how to scale a sales team. He’s also the founder of Close, a CRM for salespeople with powerful automation built in (and excellent Arrested Development references on their website). Steli will be talking about The Lies We Tell Ourselves And Each Other About Entrepreneurs. It’s common for founders to unknowingly tell themselves and others lies about the state of their companies. If we lie to ourselves, we end up lying to other people. Not realizing that you’re lying to yourself and others about your company can lead to lack of growth… or worse.

You’ll learn: the common lies founders tell themselves, how to realize you’re telling yourself these lies and how to prevent telling lies to both yourself and other people.

As the founding CEO of Riskpulse (a startup that predicts weather-based exceptions for logistics teams), Matt tested everything when seeking growth – from selling ads to freemium to inside sales and enterprise sales, first bootstrapping then raising funds from angels and VCs. Over time, he realized that weather forecasting and the challenge of predicting the growth of early-stage companies have a surprising amount in common; both are complex systems where small changes in input can have big effects on outcomes. Three years ago he began playing with this idea, then became a bit obsessed…

You’ll learn: how startups can test the underlying physics of their business model, and how these findings could lead to innovations in early-stage startup financing.

A long time attendee at Business of Software Conference, we’re delighted to welcome Sunish to speak for the first time this year. Sunish will share some of the numerous myths about accessibility and show why accessibility is an excellent business growth opportunity rather than an inevitable legal compliance risk. Sunish has simplified the rocket science behind accessible technologies so you don’t have to.

You’ll learn: how to achieve a competitive edge by offering an inclusive user experience.

Workshops

After 2.5 days of being bombarded by ideas, it’s time to step back and take stock. Optional, informal, interactive and fun. BoS workshops will help you prioritize and focus in order to maximize the value of your investment in attending Business of Software Conference.

Workshops are highly interactive, draw on the content of the conference and help you make sense of how your learning may be applied in your own organization. You will leave with an actionable ‘to do’ list of things to apply in your own company.

Giving, receiving, asking for, and acting on feedback well are some of the most-valued – yet difficult to master – skills for any manager. After years of research across hundreds of companies in 25+ countries, Claire Lew, CEO of Know Your Team, shares the playbook for how the most effective managers create a culture of feedback within their teams.

You’ll learn: how to elicit useful, honest feedback from your team and build a culture of feedback so you can continuously improve your company processes and culture.

Positioning forms the foundation of a product’s go-to-market strategy. Your marketing plans, your sales strategy, your customer segmentation, your product roadmap – each of these uses positioning as an input. Yet as important as positioning is, it is deeply misunderstood. In this workshop you’ll learn the tools you need to master positioning.

You’ll learn: How to break down a market position into component parts and ensure your positioning is based on your strengths.

Are you constantly missing your MRR targets? Unless you have a clear way to strategize, measure and manage your leadership team, you’ll continue to miss the mark. A strong process for defining your core metrics, a clear understanding of accountability and a meeting cadence to continuously synchronize the team’s goals will act like rocket fuel for your growth engine.

You’ll learn: a framework to help you define your core metrics that will fuel significant ARR growth.

Is your software excluding people with disabilities? Sunish’s workshop will help you think about how you can make your software solution accessible to people with disabilities. Infusing accessibility into your business processes and design will widen your addressable market – why would you not want to consider this?

You’ll learn: how accessible UX will benefit your existing clients and their customers.

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Business of Software Conference has a full money back guarantee. If you attend the Conference and do not get value, we will refund your ticket price. We are confident that attendees will find BoS Conference to be time and money well spent.

Our 2019 Conference will be focused on how to make product, culture, innovation, strategy, marketing and sales drive sustainable, profitable, growth.

The 2019 Schedule is not available yet, but you can see the schedule from our 2018 Conference below.