SaaStr talks the talk—billing itself as “the world’s largest community for business software.” It also boasts about more than a decade-long series of wins to get there, which included its first-ever meetup for software-as-a-service professionals in 2013—later evolving into the inaugural SaaStr Annual in 2015—then creating “the industry’s leading podcast in 2016” before opening a coworking space in 2017 and launching “the first learning management system for SaaS CEOs” just one year later, according to SaaStr’s LinkedIn overview.
Reviews from sponsors are mixed. Andy Yeo—the head of product at B2B sales firm Salesbrick—shared to LinkedIn: “We sponsored our very first event as a company at SaaStr Annual 2024 last week and it was amazing!” Yeo—who added in his post that he was “roped in” to the event by Lemkin himself—touted that post-SaaStr, Salesbrick conducted more than 60 meetings, and walked away with 200-plus leads.
Anecdotes from longtime sponsors paint a different picture, though, and it appears that SaaStr isn’t walking the walk. According to three-time SaaStr Annual sponsor Chris Gannon, the founder of Captivate Talent, a recruiting agency that helps connect SaaStr companies with top talent, SaaStr Annual has evolved into a sort of “Jason Lemkin show” (SaaStr’s founder and CEO).
Vendelux’s own data paints a similar picture. From 2022 to 2023, the total number of sponsors fell from 293 to 171—a 42% dropoff—while only a measly 87 sponsors attended SaaStr Annual in 2024–another hefty 49% year-over-year drop.
Gannon’s company first attended SaaStr in 2021 as a bronze sponsor. He recalled that “it was the first big event after COVID, and it was awesome. From our [Captivate’s] standpoint, it was when recruiting was picking up, so it was a really good place for us to be.”
That year, “we got a lot of great leads,” Gannon said, which led his firm to “double back and sign a contract for 2022.” That year, however, SaaStr ditched its bronze- and silver-level sponsorship booths. Gannon could only buy a gold booth—which he agreed to since he was grandfathered in at a rate of approximately $45,000, he told Vendelux. “It was a ton of money for a bootstrapped company like ours,” Gannon said, adding that come 2022, attending SaaStr began to feel like “a ton of work and really really expensive for always getting the smallest booth.”
By the time SaaStr Annual 2023 rolled around, Captivate had to chalk up roughly $55,000 for a sponsorship (though other returning sponsors without a special rate had to pay as much as $70,000, Gannon heard). There was a noticeable decline in the number of sponsors that year, Gannon said. And he’s correct: According to Vendelux’s data, just 27% sponsors renewed from 2022 to ‘23.
But aside from the figures, the feeling was different too, according to Gannon. “They moved everything inside. They separated all the small sponsors into one hangar and they put all the big ones in another hangar [at the San Mateo County Events Center in San Francisco].”
“We started to realize that was the vibe of the [SaaStr’s] leadership team: if you’re a G2 or a Google or an Oracle, they’re your best friends. It was our third year in a row [sponsoring] and still, we never saw the people that were running the conference,” Gannon explained. To make matters worse, “at the end of the third day [at the 2023 show], Jason Lemkin walked by, looked at our booth and said, ‘Oh, have you guys been here before?’”
At that moment, Gannon realized all the sponsorship fees Captivate was paying felt like a lot for his company, but didn’t mean much to SaaStr, he told Vendelux. So in 2024, his firm declined to return as a sponsor, and hosted side events while the main show took place. In all, 75% of sponsors from 2023 did not renew their contracts with SaaStr Annual 2024. Just 4% of SaaStr Annual sponsors have returned for all three of the most recent iterations of the San Francisco event.
Still one of Captivate’s most talked-about side events, Gannon explained, was a wellness-focused early-morning event. At 6:30 a.m. during SaaStr Annual 2024, Captivate partnered with a venue near the convention center equipped with saunas and cold plunges, brought in coffee and breakfast and invited prospective clients to kickstart the day. “It was intimate, fun and different, and we walked away feeling like we were really able to build deep, real relationships with individuals,” Gannon said.
As for SaaStr Annual 2025—which was moved away from the event’s typical September dates to May 13-15 of next year—Captivate plans on sitting this one out.
“So, if you played our trading card game, stopped by our booth, attended one of our happy hours, dinners, or lunches, or even did a cold plunge with us, it’s not goodbye; it’s just that we’ll see you at Dreamforce, INBOUND, GTM Summit, SaaStock or one of the other events in the circuit,” Gannon wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Representatives for SaaStr did not immediately respond to Vendelux’s request for comment.
Editor’s Note: The data cited in the story was derived from Vendelux’s proprietary database. Vendelux tracks sponsorships for all B2B events year over year using publicly available data.
