Community Events

Great connections are gold. Back in 2017 we organised our first delegation of New Zealand SaaS companies to the annual SaaStr conference in the USA. The valuable connections that we made, and a need to maintain and grow those connections, sparked the start of our kiwiSaaS community. Today, the community connects regularly through our many events and activities.

Upcoming Events

kiwiSaaS Local Chapter meetup | Auckland - Wednesday 31 May 2023
Please join us at the next Auckland Chapter meetup, brought to you by the kiwiSaaS Community! Hosted by Sam Fielden, from Beca. The topic for our upcoming Local Chapter meetup is “The Future of B2B Sales and Commerce.” Last month Matt Furse (Microsoft Marketplace) gave a great presentation on this in our kiwiSaaS Need to Know webinar series (watch the video recording inside kiwiSaaS Central). Our kiwiSaaS Local Chapters are a great place to get to know your local SaaS colleagues.
Presenter:
May 31, 2023
4.00pm - 6.00pm
kiwiSaaS Local Chapter meetup | Bay of Plenty - Tuesday 6 June, 2023
We are pleased to bring you the next kiwiSaaS Local Chapter meetup for the Bay of Plenty. Hosted by Korey Rubenstein, this is a great opportunity to meet with fellow SaaS company members. Brett Roberts from kiwiSaaS will also be attending. The topic for our upcoming Local Chapter meetup is “The Future of B2B Sales and Commerce.” Last month Matt Furse (Microsoft Marketplace) gave a great presentation on this in our kiwiSaaS Need to Know webinar series (watch the video recording inside kiwiSaaS Central). Our kiwiSaaS Local Chapters are a great place to get to know your local SaaS colleagues.
Presenter:
June 6, 2023
5.00pm - 7.00pm
kiwiSaaS Local Chapter meetup | Christchurch - Thursday 15 June 2023
We are delighted to invite you to the next Christchurch Chapter meetup, brought to you by the kiwiSaaS Community! Ever wondered how some companies successfully raise money multiple times, yet others struggle? What exactly did the successful ones do? What do investors expect at the different stages? Join us at our Christchurch KiwiSaaS chapter meeting where we will reveal the answers to these questions. Hosted by Lee Stevens, this is a great opportunity to meet with fellow SaaS company members in your local area. We will speak to Vanessa OBrien who explains how she successfully raised money for Orbvis and Paul Claridge (Canterbury Angels) who gives us the inside scoop on what a deal looks like on the other side of the fence! Our kiwiSaaS local chapters are for anyone working in a New Zealand-founded SaaS company, including technical staff, all functional leads and their team members, as well as founders - it’s a great way to get to know your local SaaS colleagues.
Presenter:
June 15, 2023
4.30pm - 6.30pm
kiwiSaaS - Local Chapters

kiwiSaaS Local Chapters

We all know that working in SaaS can feel lonely at times and opportunities to network exclusively with like-minded SaaS people are rare, particularly in the regions. Register to attend your next local Local Chapter meetup - and make sure you've joined our kiwiSaaS community so you'll be notified of future meetups in your area. The gatherings are relaxed with plenty of time to chat and to share ideas on topics such as supporting local SaaS talent growth.

Upcoming Events

30% of marketing budgets are wasted on misdirected work. How to avoid costly detours | Online
30% of marketing budgets are wasted on misdirected work. How to avoid costly detours | Online
Without a clear strategy often the loudest voice influences marketing priorities. Pushing people off track, wasting time and budgets. Winning hearts and minds is as much a battle for board room backing as it is for customer attention. When everyone knows how you plan to win, and how they contribute to success, you start to build a culture of relentless execution. In this webinar Justin Flitter, vCMO and author of Unrivaled, the B2B Marketing Strategy Workbook, discusses his top tips to develop a marketing strategy everyone can rally behind.
June 14, 2023
11.00am - 12.00pm
Sprinting on a short runway: Resilience strategies to help you take flight | Online
Sprinting on a short runway: Resilience strategies to help you take flight | Online
Most people think that to succeed founders need to give ‘their all’ to their business. In fact, the founders that succeed beyond the initial short runway are those that manage to sustain themselves and the key people on their teams. Dr Denise Quinlan will share practical strategies that ensure you and your team get the job done and don’t fall over – particularly important when you’re sprinting on a short runway!
June 27, 2023
11.00am - 12.00pm
From Retention to Advocacy: How to Use Customer Marketing to Grow Your SaaS Business | Online
From Retention to Advocacy: How to Use Customer Marketing to Grow Your SaaS Business | Online
Far too often SaaS businesses put all their focus into ‘top of funnel’ customer acquisition and underinvest in customer retention. The customer experience doesn’t end once first payment has been secured, and SaaS businesses need to build a plan that spans the entire customer lifecycle to succeed long-term. However, customer marketing often falls down a crack due to a lack of clear ownership between customer-facing functions. Without a strong customer marketing engine, you’ll likely end up with expensive churn (the classic leaky bucket) and additional pressure on the acquisition engine to keep filling the top of the funnel. And when economic conditions get tougher and your runway needs to extend out, customer marketing is more crucial than ever – it is the fuel to your SaaS engine.
July 26, 2023
11am - 12pm
kiwiSaaS - Need to know

kiwiSaaS 'Need to Know' Series

Essential, short and punchy learning sessions run by experienced SaaS practitioners and hosted by Brett Roberts, our kiwiSaaS Community Director. The kiwiSaaS 'Need to Know' Webinar equips SaaS entrepreneurs with the critical ‘survival’ skills needed to tackle big business challenges such as attracting talent, data security and business scaling.

Excellent talk and perfect for the stage of our company and my own career path
Ben Gracewood sessions: ‘Ben is awesome – I enjoyed listening to his real-life experiences at Vend. It’s been valuable.’
Really informative, thank you team!

Upcoming Events

Kiss My SaaS June 2023 - Auckland
Kiss My SaaS is a series of peer-to-peer learning workshops addressing key business capabilities needed to grow your SaaS business. Whether you are just starting or looking to rapidly expand your SaaS business, then this event is for you. Kiss My SaaS is for companies with a commercial product internationally focused and over $1mill ARR looking to scale. Workstreams offered are: CEO, Maori, Marketing and Sales
Presenter:
June 28, 2023
1.00pm - 4.00pm
Kiss My SaaS Byte My SaaS

Kiss My SaaS, Byte My SaaS

Kiss My SaaS and Byte My SaaS are peer-to-peer learning experiences hosted by NZTE. Meet with local SaaS professionals in roles similar to your own, to problem solve and learn from one another. Our small group sessions are organised according to your SaaS company size to ensure discussions remain relevant to your business needs.

Southern SaaS

New Zealand’s annual gathering for Software-as-a-Service practitioners.

This year's programme features thought-provoking speakers, seriously actionable workshops, and opportunities to collaborate with SaaS peers. Challenge your thinking and be motivated by our exciting morning line-up of local and international speakers, hosted by Q+A’s Jack Tame. In the afternoon you’ll tackle an issue that is relevant to your business in one of our instructor-led, hands-on workshops. Come away with the tools and know-how to achieve real results.

Visit www.southernsaas.nz  to read about our exciting line-up of speakers and workshops.

Southern SaaS
Great conference, so much learning... and of a really high quality. Keep it up for next year, I will definitely be back.
The value [of the event] to the NZ tech industry must be huge… We are learning from each other and this avoids the traps we can fall into.
One of the best events I have been to. Better than SaaStr in San Francisco.

Annual SaaStr Delegations

The event that started it all, our annual pilgrimage to the US SaaStr Annual conference.

This page will be updated when details of upcoming SaaStr delegations are confirmed.

I’m still processing it all! It’s going to take a few weeks for us to work out how to implement some of the things we’ve learnt here – it’s exciting and inspiring!
It’s great having new ways to think about problems that we are facing in our business right now. I’ve learnt some really actionable insights around pricing and customer problem discovery that we can apply as soon as we get home.
I’ve come away with a set of steps and a set of benchmarks to work from to know if I’m on the right track with my business.
SaaStr conference
Two people talking at SaaS event

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