events

We can't believe it has been a month already since Saastr Annual 2019. We have been in a whirlwind of follow ups for the past 3 weeks (and still are). It simply was a mesmerizing experience to say the least. In case you didn't have the chance to attend, we got you covered.

The death of the sales funnel and the birth of the true flywheel

Over the last decade, the SaaS industry has worshiped the sales funnel (just like most funnels). SaaStr Annual as usual brought us this year some breaking news and highlighted the latest trends in the same context.

During the "The Funnel is Dead. Long Live the Flywheel with Hubspot"  session, Hubspot's CEO Brian Halligan highlighted some of weaknesses of the traditional funnel.

Now, the funnel is not completely dead. Like any other human invention, there was a strong need to make few adjustments based on the changes of the SaaS landscape.The funnel assumes that your customer will only buy once. However, to grow fast and generate revenue, your customer has to purchase your product repeatedly  (assuming you are following the subscription model). This pricing model won't only ensure a recurring profit regularly but also helps outline your revenue projection throughout the year and beyond.

This truly comes in handy when you are raising money from investors. It's their only way to get an idea how profitable your business  can be once they choose to put all their chips on your company.

The marketing flywheel destroys the funnel to set you on the track of building a scalable repeatable model and generate more leads. It recognizes the customer as a valuable asset to help your business grow.This is achievable by setting a strong inbound strategy. Whether it's a company blog or podcast, the goal is to push your adopters aka champions to activate their strong network of referrals, hence keeping the ball rolling ;)

Connect and meet like minded people

We had amazing opportunities to meet a lot of people thanks to the Brella app. Brella is an ward-winning networking software that helps event organizers and attendees with networking. The SaaStr Annual team leveraged this solution to the fullest.

It is really great because it allowed us to set up a lot of meetings with prospects, investors and advisors. Yet, still  attend some amazing sessions to meet amazing exhibitors and fellow SaaS enthusiasts.

As we previously mentioned, by the end of SaaStr Annual, everyone knew about Veamly long before our official lunch the week after.

Long live Diversity in SaaS

One of the biggest takeaways for every woman in tech and a female founder was the huge efforts deployed to have women everywhere on panels along with special sessions and one awesome happy hour with unusual VC. The SaaStr team took a step further by giving away more than 1000 tickets for minorities and underrepresented communities. Now, they are doing the same for SaaStr Europa.

‍This is something our CEO Emna Ghariani touched on via an emotional tweet that eventually went VIRAL!

Thank you SaaStr for leading by example in the industry, and we hope more companies join next year. It's a wrap.