Event category: BetaKit Keynote Stage

The investment frenzy we all witnessed in the fall of 2021 has suddenly come to a standstill. Investors are pulling back the reigns to re-evaluate their portfolios and investing strategies. The fallout of this free-for-all has seen SaaS start-ups downsize and brace for lower valuations.

Many startup founders are asking: what’s the path to weather this economic downturn? We curated three seasoned investors to convey their perspectives on the state of the market and what this means for valuations, resource allocation and raising money during this precarious time.

As your SaaS companies grows, it becomes increasingly important to identify expansion opportunities. Global expansion is a huge opportunity for revenue growth. But with many cultural, financial and practical differences to consider, global growth depends on careful strategy and commitment.

In this session, join executives at Hubspot, Clio and Stripe as they talk about their approaches, challenges and global expansion strategies. This session will cover everything from readiness, commitment and resources as well as measuring success and the return on investment.

Paddle is quite a non-traditional, forward-thinking tech company with a non-traditional Founder at its helm. Join Christian Owens, Founder & CEO Paddle, and Douglas Soltys, Editor-In-Chief at BetaKit as they talk about Paddle’s journey from 0 to $1.4B and the lessons, stories, and hard-won advice that comes along with building and scaling a SaaS business that serves SaaS businesses.

As a leader in the SaaS, recurring revenue world, your job is always getting harder. Competition is increasing. Your customers are expecting more from you. The relative value of your features is declining. The strategies you’ve used to grow your company in the past aren’t going to work for you. You can either adapt to the new SaaS economy or fall behind.

Given these shifts and some unique and proprietary SaaS market data, Chief Strategy Officer at Paddle and Founder of Profitwell, Patrick Campbell will be showcasing the results of a deep study on what's shifted (and how you can thrive despite these challenges). Having seen inside more SaaS Companies than anyone else on the planet, Patrick will teach you a helpful framework to re-evaluate your retention strategy and increase your CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), who has accelerated in this new era and those who haven't (and what you can learn), a better understanding of where the SaaS market is heading and actionable takeaways from the data to implement.

Serial entrepreneur, Louis Tetu, has seen this tape before. Throughout his 30+ years leading multiple international technology businesses at 3 public software companies, Tetu has learned how to weather economic storms to ensure no good crisis goes to waste.

While no one could have predicted some of the macroeconomic or political issues that were on the horizon, one thing was very clear to Tetu: a decade of economic growth and low cost of capital could not last forever. Tetu’s current company, artificial intelligence platforms leader Coveo, had arguably one of the better-timed IPOs of 2021, raising $247M in November 2021.

In times of turbulence, as in times of growth, you can always set your business up for success by thinking long-term and developing strategies to take advantage of the environment, by thinking differently. Now that a perfect economic storm is upon us, leaders must remind themselves that there is a sun above the clouds, despite not seeing it.

Louis will share personal views, inspired from his experience, about how to think about growth, talent, workplace, efficiency, markets and products in turbulent times, and how to emerge stronger longer term.

In August of 2021, Kathleen Chan, CEO & Co-Founder at Calico raised a CAD $2.6 million seed round which included Serena Williams. Shortly after, in November 2021, Shawn Hewat, CEO & Co-Founder of Wavy, raised a CAD $2.5 million seed round. In this SaaS North session, Shawn & Kathleen alongside early-stage investor Eva Lau will sit down with Betakit’s Douglas Soltys to talk about raising capital. In this candid session, you will learn what investors look for, how to navigate the process of raising your first round and how to manage your investors afterward.

In the world of SaaS, it is common for sustaining growth to be more challenging than attaining initial traction. What do you do when you're trying to reach the next growth milestone, but nothing really seems to stick? Squeezing ad channels doesn't quite net the big, dramatic result in growth you were expecting. You're at a loss for what part of the market to focus on next. Slow or unexciting growth happens all the time, but there are ways that we can overcome the slowness and beat the "Slow SaaS ramp of death". In this talk, Asia Orangio, CEO and Founder of DemandMaven, will take you through the complete end-to-end process of how SaaS companies can find growth opportunities that may not seem so obvious. Plus, see a case study of how she helped her client take advantage of those growth opportunities and 10x their revenue.