Founderpath is announcing today that we’ve acquired event company SaaSOpen, the premier SaaS event for 1,000+ SaaS leaders each spring in NYC.
Founderpath Running Events a Mistake?
We announced our $145m fund to support bootstrapped SaaS founders with non-dilutive capital earlier this year. Over $50m had already been deployed. (More to announce here shortly)
This would not have been possible without the Founderpath Slack Channel which connects founders with other founders at their same revenue stage. Revenue verification is required. Founders told us to invest more on building a great invite-only SaaS community.
Great does not mean big.
Our focus is not on creating a “big” group of founders. The hard work is cutting down each channel to be more niche and never exceed 50 members:
- Bootstrapped SaaS Founders with $3-4m in revenue
- CFO’s at $10m ARR companies
- Heads of Product who use a PLG sales motion
Acquiring SaaSOpen is another step towards creating the most valuable community for SaaS leaders.
How big was the Deal?
“A number that started with 7,” Latka smiled. “I feel like we overpaid but it was a deal we wanted to get done before the holidays.”
SaaSOpen does not operate like most other SaaS conferences. There are no panels. Sponsors are not allowed on stage. Attendees are encouraged to leave the main stage area and engage in pre set up 1 on 1 meetings with other founders and executives at their ARR level.
Confirmed speakers for the 2023 event include:
- Henry Schuck, CEO of Zoominfo on the Founder Stage
- Kyle Poyar, Open Views’ lead on everything PLG on the Growth Stage
- Serge Barysiuk, Founder and CPO of PandaDoc on the Product Stage
- Marie Martens, bootstrapped Tally to $20k MRR on Twitter on the Growth Stage
- Neil Patel, used SEO to grow UberSuggest into the millions on the Marketing Stage
- Ben Murray, the SaaSCFO on the Finance stage
- View all 63+ speakers here
See the VIP room pictures?
2023 Tickets Sold out in The First 43 Minutes
On Sept 1st, 75 early bird tickets were released. The tickets sold out in 43 minutes.
Founders like Bridget at YouCanBookMe bought 3 tickets for her leadership team:
As soon as I saw the dedicated stages, I immediately signed up our executive team. They’ll learn from speakers like Derek Steer (Mode) and Jeff Hasselo (Head of Finance at Slack).
We’re going to use the momentum from the conference to have our spring strategic planning session after the conference. I can’t think of any place better than NYC!
Another batch of 50 early bird tickets were released at 6am EST today. Use code ACQUIRED to save $1300 on your ticket.
If you wait to purchase, you’ll pay full price (averaged $2,497 for our 2022 events).
10,000 Attending, 5 Days of Content?
The next SaaSOpen is March 16th-17th in NYC.
Over 1,000 SaaS leaders will attend live.
As of this writing, there are 21 other events scheduled around SaaSOpen. Individual organizations have set up dinners, coffee’s, and mastermind sessions like:
- Most Powerful Women in SaaS Dinner
- Twitter Build in Public Founders Dinner
- Indie Worldwide Meetup
This pattern of micro-events around a main conference is how South by Southwest started back in its early days.
“Over time, we plan to invest heavily into SaaSOpen to make it a week long plus event focused on every idea around building and scaling SaaS companies,” said Latka. “1,000 SaaS founders and executives came to our events in 2022. We expect that number to grow to 5,000 next year.”
The conference will grow to 10k in 2024 with 5 full days of content.
A full list of the top SaaS events happening in 2023 can be found at SaaSevents.com.
Use this code to save $1300 Today Only (50 Available)
Another batch of 50 SaaSOpen early bird tickets were released at 9am EST today. Use code ACQUIRED to save $1300 on your ticket.
If you wait to purchase, you’ll pay full price. The full price for our events this year averaged $2,497.
(Update) Here’s what’s left:
