A conference focused on software as a service (SaaS) that promises to introduce the next wave of SaaS superstars to Ireland is to take place in Dublin in September.
More than 700 people are expected to attend the inaugural SaaStock event, which is taking place at the RDS on September 22nd. Organised by London-based digital media and events firm SaaScribe, the conference is aimed at early-stage to growth-stage business-to-business Saas founders and investors.
Among the headline speakers will be Stacey Bishop, a partner with Scale Venture, an investor capital firm with total assets of $1 billion, whose portfolio companies include HubSpot. She'll be joined by the likes of Des Traynor, co-founder and chief strategy office of Irish tech firm Intercom, and by Siraj Khaliq of Atomico, the investment firm led by Niklas Zennström, who co-founded Skype and Kazaa. Khaliq is a former Google employee who also co-founded the Climate Corporation, which was acquired by Monsanto for $1.1 billion.
Other speakers include Michiel Kotting, a partner with the European venture-capital fund Northzone. Formerly with Accel, he was heavily involved in the group's investments in companies such as Spotify.
Event organiser Alexander Theuma, founder of SaaScribe, was keen to draw a distinction between SaaStock and other tech conferences, most notably the Web Summit.
“When people hear that SaaStock is taking place in Dublin, the knee-jerk question I get asked is if we are trying to replace Web Summit. My answer is a resolute no. For one, I don’t think Web Summit will be replaced as it is an outlier and I also think it’s not very original or interesting if you try,” he said.
"SaaStock is a new business conference, we believe it's unique to Europe and Ireland and we are 100 per cent focused on helping the European SaaS Ecosystem flourish. We are not a web summit wannabe. We are SaaStock."
