Stewart Townsend, SaaS Advisor, outlines an exciting opportunity for 20 Northern technology companies to go to San Francisco later this year to get inspired and make valuable business connections.
For the last 20 years, I worked for large enterprises such as Sun Microsystems and Oracle. During this period, I led Sun Microsystem’s Startup Essential Programme in Europe that supported startups through free workstations and servers, as well as sponsoring startup events and trade missions. Since then I joined a number of startups from DataSift to Zendesk, helping them to scale rapidly.
It is extremely hard to scale a technology business without penetrating the US market. Anyone can book a flight and visit San Francisco, the heart of the tech ecosystem. But without the right assistance and access to networks, it’s harder to get noticed due to the sheer number of startups based out of there as well as passing through. Tech Missions can greatly overcome this shortfall. According to Manoj Ranaweera, CEO of UnifiedVU, “
After visiting San Francisco for a week and attending Small Business Web 2011 Conference, my tech company at the time, edocr.com grew by 250% in the following year, all thanks to the relationships developed during the Visit.” I’m passionate about reducing the North / South divide. Generally, Southern tech companies had better access to US markets due to higher level of funding available to them when compared with the Northern tech companies.
I’ve joined up with Manoj to organise a Tech Mission to San Francisco from 29th April to 4th May 2018, with the hope of helping 20 Northern SaaS companies get easier access to US market and build trusting relationships. The week’s Tech Mission is centred around SaaS Connect organised by Cloud Software Association of which Manoj is a Strategic Advisor of. We’ve added three networking events, a SaaS company tour and a workshop to create a high impact for the participants.
Two of the events would be attended by investors, SaaS companies and specialists. The other event would be co-hosted with British tech entrepreneurs and investors in San Francisco. We are working with Department of International Trade to help participants recover 50% of their costs up to a maximum of £1,500. We’ve kept the admin charges to a bare minimum and have obtained a significant discount on the SaaS Connect Conference ticket prices. Flights and hotels are currently being sorted out.
For more information, please visit the #SaaSTMSf18 web page.
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