Episode 682 | The Pros and Cons of Large vs. Small Startup Events

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 682, Rob Walling interviews Alex Theuma, the founder of SaaStock, a conference for SaaS founders. They discuss the challenges of bootstrapping an event and the pros and cons of large startup events versus small startup events. Alex also shares his experience of building credibility and authority in the industry, the importance of maintaining a positive attendee experience, and ensuring financial sustainability. Episode Sponsor: Tired of searching endlessly for highly skilled software developers? CloudDevs is your solution. Gain access to over 8000 pre-vetted senior devs distributed across their Latin America and global talent pools. All their remote developers work within your own time zone and can get onboarded within 24 hours. The CloudDevs team can help you recruit full time hires, or part time, project based freelancers. And every hire comes with a week-long free trial, making sure you get the right person for the job. All of our listeners get a 15% discount on their first month of collaboration. Hire trusted tech talent efficiently without breaking the bank by visiting CloudDevs.com. Topics we cover: 2:44 – How Alex bootstrapped SaaStock in the early stages 4:32 – Laying the groundwork and building credibility 6:59 – Figuring out sponsor subsidies 8:53 – Reflecting on the first event, growing afterwards 12:59 – Event sizing and event types 19:44 – Setting up event programming 23:00 – Swapping crazy event stories Links from the Show: Microconf Mastermind Matching SaaStock SaaStock (@SaaStock) | X SaaStock | LinkedIn Alex Theuma (@alextheuma) | X The SaaS Revolution Show ChartMogul Web Summit ProfitWell Dunbar's number SaaS.City Muck Rack Patrick Campbell’s “Churn” talk If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review:

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Startups for the rest of us. I'm Rob Walling. This week, I talk with Alex Thuma, the founder of
0:05.7	Sastock. We talk about a myriad of topics around trying to bootstrap an event and how hard that is,
0:11.7	the pros and cons of large events versus small startup events. And at the end, we share a couple
0:17.7	memorable mishaps or war stories from years of running events.
0:23.4	I've actually wanted to attend a SaaS doc for the past few years,
0:27.4	and there always seems to be a scheduling issue on my end that has kept me from attending
0:31.5	just to check it out, you know, a big event with a lot of people, multiple stages,
0:36.1	to see and experience what I've heard a lot of
0:38.4	folks talk about. So hopefully this episode of the show brings you some insight, some
0:43.7	inspiration, and maybe a little motivation to check out SaaS talk in the future.
0:48.0	Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know about our microconf mastermind
0:51.6	program. If you listen to this show, you know that I've
0:54.2	talked a lot on this podcast about how important masterminds have been to my own success.
0:59.6	But finding the right founders for your mastermind group can be very hard. Over the past few years,
1:04.6	my team at MicroConf has successfully matched more than a thousand founders into mastermind groups
1:09.0	by looking at revenue, team size,
1:11.5	strengths, goals, and several other data points to make sure your peer group is the right fit.
1:17.0	Once you're matched, you'll also have access to our mentorship series, a three-month program
1:21.5	where you can connect with some great minds in sales, business development, marketing, and more.
1:26.7	If you're looking for accountability, honest feedback about your business,
1:29.5	and the opportunity to make new friends that care about your company and your success,
1:34.4	you can learn more at microconf.coms.com slash masterminds. Alex, thanks so much for joining me and start-ups for the rest of us.
	...

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