The Future of SaaS Events - with Poya Osgouei

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Wright, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show. Before we get to today's interview, let me tell you about what I'm listening to. You ever wanted to sit down to a candid conversation with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands? The Current Podcast is your chance. On The Current Podcast, you'll find exclusive interviews with experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising. And don't worry, they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. Subscribe to The Current at www.thecurrent.com or anywhere you get your podcast today.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. Today, I am joined by Poya Osgouei, the founder and CEO of event sponsors and the host of the Uncharted podcast. We'll be covering three primary topics with Poya today. Number one, the evolution of B2B technology events. Second, community or revenue, how to measure the ROI of B2B events. And third, the power of networking. So Poya, with that, would you mind taking a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming my guest here on the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. Benchmarkit conducts original benchmarking research programs in partnership with leading B2B SaaS companies, including Gainsight, SalesLoft, Lean Data, Pavilion, Pendo, CloudZero, and Exactly. Our original benchmarking programs result in a compelling content marketing asset in the form of both a report and interactive benchmarking portal that engages executive buyers to see how their internal performance metrics and processes measure up to their light company cohort. Our partners report that our original benchmarking research programs are a top producing content marketing asset as measured by downloads, target buyer engagement, and executive buyer awareness. If you would like to learn more about how you can partner with BenchMarket to conduct an original benchmarking research program that increases awareness and engagement with your economic buyers, send an email to Ray at benchmarket.ai, that's Ray at BenchMarket with an it.ai.

**Poya Osgouei** (2:45)
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, Ray, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Big fan, longtime listener, great to be a guest.
I started my journey, I would say, at Oracle about 15 years ago. I started as a rep like many others as an SDR. And I'm very grateful. I was part of a program called the CLASA program. Mark Hurd is known for a lot of things, but less so for starting this initiative, which was like, hey, let's hire kids out of college and train them and see where they go. And now 10, 15 years later, it's kind of amazing the impact that's had, because a lot of us have gone on to be VPs, some even CROs. So it's just remarkable to kind of see that come in and play an effective role in my life as well as many others. After Oracle, I went and worked for a bunch of different startups, usually as a sales rep. During that time, I became part of a community called SaaStr, really ingrained myself, had a ton of fun, worked there for a couple of years, and on the side supported a ton of various startups, some that have succeeded and gone acquired, some that for whatever reason didn't get traction, but there were great learning lessons. And about six years ago, I decided to basically just go independent. So now what I do is exactly what I was doing for SaaStr, which is selling sponsorships for a variety of communities that are much more targeted. So I do Plato Elevates event, which is the largest engineering leadership community. I do Lenny and Summit, which is a great community for product leaders, and so on and so forth. So I have a bunch of different great communities where they host in-person events in my pocket. And on the side, I work for a couple of early stage start-ups, usually Seed, Series A, and I sit at the intersection of GoToMarket, so I help them usually with sales advisory. But we use in-person events, whether it's meetups, dinners, going to conferences, as a way to get them in front of their buyers and their customers. So that's a little high-level overview, and I apologize for making the monologue.

**Ray Rike** (4:40)
That's okay, Poya. You're the person I want to talk to about B2B events for the technology industry, but I didn't know about the training program that you entered into at Oracle. I had a similar experience at GE many, many years ago, where the head of sales wanted to take people with technical backgrounds like myself and put us through a year-long training program to become salespeople. Because his belief was, if you're selling a technology product to technology people, you would like to have salespeople who understand the technology, but at the same time can sell. So interesting parallel paths there. But we met from your SaaStr days, the grand daddy of B2B SaaS events. So who better to ask then, how have you seen B2B technology events evolve over the past few years, especially pre, during and post COVID?