SaaStock USA 2024: Peaka Back in Austin

The event season is in full swing, and one of the most special events is right around the corner: SaaStock USA 2024.

This year's conference will be held at Palmer Events Center in Austin from May 13 to May 15. With more than 1500 attendees, 500 companies, and 60 speakers expected in just three days, it will be jam-packed with networking and partnership opportunities for like-minded people.

SaaStock 2023: Lessons learned

SaaStock USA is an event that is particularly close to our hearts at Peaka. It’s because last year’s gathering was the first major event Team Peaka had attended after our rebranding.

We had just pivoted from a B2C no-code app development platform to a B2B data integration platform in Spring 2023. When our product manager Burak and I landed in Austin in our Star Wars-themed t-shirts, we had one thing on mind: How we could make the most of SaaStock ’23. With a mission to make data integration accessible to startups, we were determined to capitalize on this event to meet as many startups as possible, test our hypotheses, and refine our ICPs.

Team Peaka rocking our Star Wars-themed t-shirts at SaaStock USA 2023.

During the event, I gave a keynote speech about how successful data integration initiatives could drive growth in SaaS companies. Although data integration is often seen as the domain of enterprises, startups and SMBs have data integration needs that are often overlooked. The speech laid out the rationale behind Peaka’s focus on developing solutions for these types of companies: Startups were facing data challenges earlier than anticipated, and they needed a sound plan for data integration right from the outset.

Peaka CEO Mustafa Sakalsız seen during his speech at the Growth Stage during SaaStock USA 2023.

The feedback we received in Austin proved pivotal in shaping the recent trajectory of our platform. It confirmed our belief that startups and SMBs with a headcount of 20-200 people and newly-forming data silos would be our target segment. Over the past year, we have been diligently crafting solutions for startups that have reached a certain scale and started facing data-related challenges. These startups, often constrained by limited resources to invest in enterprise-grade products or maintain large data teams, have become the focal point of our platform's evolution.

SaaStock 2024: What’s ahead?

This year’s SaaStock is poised to be even busier and more exciting than last year’s event. Here is a brief look at our schedule:

May 13

As part of the SaaStock Startup Program, Team Peaka will meet with investors and attend a series of workshops at Inn Cahoots on May 13. The Startup Program will be a good opportunity for us to show where our platform stands a year after our launch, demonstrate its capabilities, and explore future partnerships with people and organizations who need a more streamlined data integration process.

May 14 & 15

We will be at Palmer Events Center for the last two days of SaaStock ’24 (May 14 and 15). We are currently setting up meetings with other participants with the aim of having a full schedule by the time we touch down in Austin. Our team will offer one-on-one demos of Peaka at our booths at R3 & R4 and discuss individual use cases with attendants. High on our agenda are two particular topics:

Our zero-ETL approach to data integration: Team Peaka will demonstrate how data virtualization is the ideal data integration solution for startups with limited resources. With federated query capability, streaming ingestion, and change data capture (CDC), Peaka makes zero-ETL accessible to startups, allowing them to consume data regardless of source and without having to build and maintain ETL pipelines. Peaka’s zero-ETL enables SaaS startups to leverage their data while staying nimble and flat.

Our serverless connector infrastructure: We are particularly looking forward to meeting founders of AI startups who are striving to easily integrate with their customers’ tech stacks and ship more connectors faster. Building an integration, which usually takes weeks, is one thing, but maintaining those integrations is quite another. Under pressure to launch a series of integrations to convert leads, maintain connectors, and carry out daily operations, these organizations are stretched too thin.

With its serverless connector infrastructure that offers connectivity to 300+ relational and NoSQL databases, APIs, and SaaS tools in minutes, Peaka can single-handedly enable AI startups to scale their operations.

On May 15, I will take to the Growth stage once again, this time for a speech titled “The Top 5 KPIs You Should Be Tracking to Scale in 2024.”

I think this is a good time to talk about what high-quality growth looks like. The last two years have been a rough ride for SaaS companies around the world, and the growth-at-all-costs mentality no longer seems to hold true. Instead of throwing money at every project with some potential, venture capital firms now prioritize profitability over growth. I will try to offer a new perspective on how to quantify various aspects of growth and the different metrics that tell us about the health of a company in my speech.

Final thoughts

SaaStock USA is a great venue for a company like Peaka that offers innovative solutions to niche problems. It brings us together with many of our target users and almost feels like running a 3-day focus group. Last year’s event was a rewarding experience that helped set us on our course for a year. Here’s hope that this year’s event will be even better.