In mid-March, when it became clear that live events were no longer happening due to the COVID-19 outbreak, event organizers had to think fast. SaaStock buckled up and decided to host their event virtually—a tall order, to switch gears from live to virtual in less than three months, but they did so graciously.
They felt that speaking to the SaaS community and staying connected in an accessible and safe environment was more important than ever, and brought the community together virtually.
Hundreds of attendees hopped on Hopin from June 10-11 for SaaStock Remote—a virtual conference experience. When logging in, attendees are immediately greeted with the main page, a lively chat amongst all attendees and live polls used to gather insights, many of which focused on the new challenges of COVID-19, its impact, and how businesses are adapting.
A takeaway we noticed for events turning virtual—it increases audience participation. Q&A chats can get lively on virtual platforms, unlike the quiet rooms during live presentations.
This was apparent especially during main stage sessions like “MonYAY: Dismantling the Myth of Hustle Culture” with David Heinemeier Hansson, Co-Founder & CTO, BaseCamp who kept it real when discussing company culture especially in a time when thinking about the future of your business seems more pressing than ever before. Attendees engaged in chats during the session, sharing their own thoughts and questions not only to the presenter, but with one another.
A few other highlights from the virtual conference:
Promise Phelon, Founder of Growth Warrior, gave a talk on “Building an Antifragile Business,” where she explored why entrepreneurs and leaders should lean in to challenges and have hard conversations, especially during uncertain times like these,. During an audience Q&A she explained how she sees a trend of investments moving towards conscious driven organizations.
SC Moatti, Managing Partner of Mighty Capital, presented “The Exit Playbook: Yes, it STILL Exists” on Thursday afternoon on the Growth stage. Her session helped founders understand their exit options and how they can position themselves and their teams for financial success, especially as the COVID-19 crisis impacts economic activity and deal flow.
Vasco Pedro from Unbabel discussed how the combination of AI technology and human interaction is what will increase the value of our work in his talk “The Future is Here: How Humans and AI Will Propel The Hybrid Workforce.” For instance, AI can take over the more repeatable tasks in our jobs while we can focus on being more humane and personable in our work rather than focusing on those mundane tasks than can be draining. During Q&A he shared his thoughts on how we still have a huge amount of work to do before we can have total autonomous technology like self-driving cars.
Interested in speaking at events like SaaStock Remote? Get in touch!
