Real party, real SaaS people!
TL;DR: You won’t want to miss our International SaaS Day Party in Wellington on Thursday 18 June: feat. Hannah Bryan comedy set, silly games, DJ and dancing. Beforehand, we’re hosting a SaaSpocalypse leaders’ discussion. Also coming up: a free AI ops webinar and GTM workshop in Wellington.
The SaaSpocalpyse is here! But what is it really?
There’s no shortage of hot takes about the SaaSpocalypse. What’s changing now is that the real risks and opportunities are starting to take shape — and so are the strategic responses world-class SaaS businesses are making.
We’re convening a friendly, private discussion for ~50 SaaS leaders to compare notes candidly on what this shift means for Aotearoa’s SaaS companies.
What we’ll cover:
How we’re assessing risk across different business models, markets, and functions
Where we see the strongest strategic moats and opportunities
Valuation dynamics: what’s happening in capital raising and M&A
How we’re having these conversations with teams, boards, customers, and other stakeholders
Join us in Wellington on Thursday 18 June (1:00-4:00pm). Afterwards: we’ll roll straight into the International SaaS Day party at Foxglove from 5:00pm.
🎉International SaaS Day party 2026
We’re genuinely fizzed about this: Hannah Bryan (ex-Tracksuit) is coming to do a SaaS comedy set at our International SaaS Day Party.
Hannah’s story is the kind you’d call ‘too much for one year’ — big life change and potentially redefining the meaning of SaaS standup (look out PMs). If you’ve ever battled imposter syndrome, shipped under pressure, or had a ‘what am I doing here?’ moment in tech… you’ll feel seen.
Real parties are weirdly hard to find… so we’re pulling out all the stops for this one.Expect a proper party: food, silly games, dancing, DJ, excellent humans and epic entertainment. Yep, Serge is on MC duties too.
Thursday 18 June | 5:00pm-2:00am | Foxglove Bar, Wellington | Cost: $30
Dress code: Something interesting. Please.
Register
New webinar: operationalising AI for business teams
AI is moving fast out of engineering and into business teams — but across the KiwiSaaS community, the operators getting real traction aren’t the ones with the flashiest tools. They’re the ones who’ve worked out how to bring the whole organisation along.
In May we ran a half-day Auckland workshop with 20+ leaders from KiwiSaaS large members digging into exactly that. This webinar is a tight recap for anyone who couldn’t make it, and a chance to revisit the sharpest ideas for those who did.
Wednesday 1 July | 1:00-1:45pm | Online | Free
Register
GTM Engineering: automate, scale + win
GTM Engineering is reshaping how the world’s fastest-growing companies go to market — Canva, Stripe, Ramp and OpenAI are already doing it. Silicon Valley can’t stop talking about it… and here in Aotearoa, it’s barely on the radar (yet).
Join Paul Zaruchevsky (Wedge GTM) for a public, in-person workshop in Wellington (we don’t get enough of these) where we’ll unpack what GTM Engineering is, why it’s emerging now, what the stack looks like, and real GTM plays you can implement to generate more pipeline without scaling headcount.
Friday 14 August | 9:30–11:30am | Taiawa Wellington Tech Hub (Vic Uni), Rutherford House, 33 Bunny St, Wellington | Free
Register
Now hiring: fresh roles at KiwiSaaS companies
Currently, there’s four open jobs at AoFrio, 16 at EROAD, 8 at Serko, 6 roles at Tracksuit, one at Kindo and 11 at Kami.
Techweek26 highlights: the intelligence era
At the Techweek26 Auckland Hub, Stripe hosted a standout session for anyone building (or pricing) AI into their product, The Intelligence Era: Pricing AI for Growth. Facilitated by Janine Grainger, the conversation brought together leaders from Vista Group, Re-Leased, Sharesies, and Stripe NZ to unpack what’s changing fast — from AI’s real marginal costs, to the rise of hybrid and outcome-based pricing, to the messy reality of measuring ROI.
Here are the highlights — and the practical ideas you can borrow as you scale AI sustainably.
That’s us — hope to see you at Foxglove, online for the AI recap, or in Wellington for GTM Engineering. As always, if there’s a topic you want the community to dig into next, hit reply and tell us what you need.
Ngā mihi nui,
David Clearwater
Executive Director, KiwiSaaS