Our event management team wrapped up a busy fall event season after concluding three events for the Bowery Capital Leadership Series. The Leadership Series— composed of the Sales Summit, People & Talent Summit, and Finance & Ops Summit—was built to generate opportunities and insights for thought leaders at early-stage SaaS and marketplace companies. Each of these events is a half-day filled with in-depth dialogue, networking opportunities, and knowledge-sharing about challenges faced, lessons learned, and best practices to implement. 

Kicking off the fall events in September, the People & Talent Summit boasted speakers from Betterment, Bowery Farming, and a keynote presentation from Bree Groff of SYPartners. The next event was the Sales Summit, which gathered more than 100 attendees to see our lineup of speakers from companies including AWS, Resy, and TripActions. The Finance & Ops Summit rounded out the event series with 20 speakers from companies such as EY, Sage Intacct, Nasdaq Private Market, and CLEAR. 

As the focus of the Leadership Series is to facilitate tactical, actionable dialogue for attendees and an engaged audience from speakers, topics across the three events ranged from Lessons Learned as a CFO, Investor Relations, How to Successfully Move Upmarket, and Developing a Highly-Personalized and Data-Driven Recruiting Process. 

Key takeaways:

• Create an inclusive environment and diversity will follow. You can’t support diverse candidates and employees if your organization isn’t ALREADY a supportive and inclusive environment. 

• If you’re going to move upmarket, then you have to invest in upskilling. One of the most common reasons organizations fail during their upmarket move is because their reps and supporting functions have not been upskilled to make an effective move.

• Raise your next round of funding when you DON’T need it. If you’re needing funding, you’re too late. Raise while your numbers look great and you have the time to dedicate to a successful round of funding. 

• Fire early and fire fast. Early-stage companies are too susceptible to the mistakes that a bad employee can make. 

• Find the employees that are passionate about your company. Create the job that best utilizes the skills of your passionate employees. Their contributions are too valuable to lose. 

Continuing the conversations that started onstage, each event rounded out the day with a happy hour and networking reception.

cred is looking ahead to four more Bowery Capital events in San Francisco and New York as we head into 2020!