Event category: BetaKit Keynote Stage

In April of 2021, Autodesk, the publicly traded software company announced that it acquired Upchain, a Toronto-based startup offering a cloud-based product life cycle management (PLM) service.

In this behind-the-scenes tell-all from tech entrepreneur, John Laslavic, you’ll hear the learnings on how John built (and eventually sold) Upchain: what worked, what didn’t, and what he would do differently, building, scaling and ultimately getting acquired.

You’ve made the very challenging decision to downsize your workforce. It wasn’t easy. But nonetheless, here you are, preparing to lay off a percentage of your staff. You know, if this process isn’t handled properly, it could cause a huge disruption to your Saas business (and affect more folks down the road).

More than 81,000 people have been laid off from the tech sector worldwide this year, including thousands at Canadian companies, and further cutbacks are likely. As a Founder/CEO or senior operator, how can you navigate big, tricky changes (such as downsizing) and how can you gracefully overcome obstacles that set you up for success in the long term?

Join Founders, Miranda Lievers, Co-Founder and COO at Thinkific and Kris Hartvigsen, CEO + Founder at Dooly as they have a candid conversation about their layoffs. They’ll talk about what they went through, how they did it, what they regret looking back, the advice they’d give to other founders and exec teams, and more.

Alison Taylor, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Jane, began her entrepreneurial journey by opening a multi-disciplinary healthcare clinic called Canopy in 2011. Running and owning a small business taught Ali the foundations of business along with a deep empathy for the life of a small business owner.

In 2014, Ali and co-founder Trevor launched a new business called Jane. Jane is now being used by over 100,000 practitioners around the world to run their practice. In this unapologetic founder-focused talk, Ali will talk about Jane's story, growth, challenges, failures, successes, and more. She'll teach you Jane's unique growth model along with their approach to sales, support, and customer success as well as her lessons learned from growing a 8-figure product-led SaaS business.

In this talk, Dan Martell, 5x SaaS founder, will teach you how to scale rapidly and improve your business operations and outcomes. But most importantly, he will show you how to grow your SaaS without the 100-hour work weeks or the founder stress. In other words, he'll teach you how to scale your SaaS business, fast, while avoiding founder burnout.

With over two decades of experience as a serial entrepreneur and founder, Dan Martell will teach you the secrets to work smarter, awhile growing your SaaS. He’ll dig into the practical steps that will allow you to start buying back time immediately, while also developing operating procedures and hiring practices that will ensure rapid and robust growth. Lastly, he will teach you how to invest in your newfound time wisely—at work and at home—so you keep building your empire while living your best life. Get unstuck, reclaim your freedom, and build your empire.

The PLG movement gained prominence during the boom times. But it’s even more relevant today amid a recession. This is because PLG can deliver CAC-efficient growth, while also reducing costs across your company. Get the PLG playbook to help you navigate the downturn from Blake Bartlett, software VC and the guy who coined the term “product-led growth” way back in 2016.