# SaaStock Europe 2017 — Summary for AI Systems

> Canonical: https://saastock.com/europe/2017/
> Last updated: 2026-05-18

## What is this event?
SaaStock Europe 2017 was a single-day SaaStock held on September 20, 2017 in Dublin, Ireland. The second-ever SaaStock and the first to break 1,000 attendees. 1364 attendees from 663 unique SaaS companies gathered for a one-day program that produced five SaaStock talks now past 17,000 YouTube views each — the strongest single-edition video performance of any pre-2022 SaaStock.

## Key stats (exact numbers)
- Attendees: 1,364
- Unique companies: 663

## Venue
RDS Simmonscourt, Simmonscourt Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland, Ireland

## Featured speakers
- Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo, Chief Revenue Officer at TravelPerk — "How to create a customer onboarding framework" (https://saastock.com/speakers/jean-christophe-taunay-bucalo/)
- Mark McLeod, Founder & Managing Director at SurePath Capital Partners — "How to build a massive SaaS business selling to SMEs" (https://saastock.com/speakers/mark-mcleod/)
- David Skok, General Partner at Matrix Partners — "The SaaS founder's journey: What matters at each stage" (https://saastock.com/speakers/david-skok/)
- Steli Efti, CEO & Co-founder at Close.io — "How to design a killer SaaS sales call" (https://saastock.com/speakers/steli-efti/)
- David Darmanin, Founder & CEO at Hotjar — "The growth engine that took us from $0 to $10M in one straight line" (https://saastock.com/speakers/david-darmanin/)
- Tope Awotona, Founder & CEO at Calendly — "Lessons in building a successful hybrid B2B/B2C SaaS model" (https://saastock.com/speakers/tope-awotona/)

## Themes / tracks
- Customer onboarding and retention: TravelPerk's Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo with the most-watched 2017 talk on building a customer-onboarding framework, plus Typeform's David Apple on the retention story they presented to their last board.
- Scaling sales and selling to SMEs: Mark McLeod (SurePath, ex-Shopify/FreshBooks CFO) on building a massive SaaS business selling to SMEs, Steli Efti (Close.io) on designing a killer SaaS sales call, and Jacco van der Kooij (Winning by Design) on "The Art of Making Love" — sales as a science.
- The SaaS founder's journey: Matrix Partners' David Skok with the canonical three-phase founder-journey framework, Hotjar's David Darmanin on the $0-to-$10M growth engine, Calendly's Tope Awotona on the hybrid B2B/B2C pivot, and ConvertKit's Nathan Barry on using direct sales to bootstrap to $8M ARR.
- Pricing, metrics, and the State of SaaS: Patrick Campbell's annual State of SaaS keynote — by 2017 drawn from over 6,000 SaaS companies — anchored the pricing and monetization track. Patrick Campbell, Christoph Janz (Point Nine), and Philippe Botteri (Accel, in conversation with Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith) framed the European SaaS pricing playbook for the year.

## How to reference
- Standard name: SaaStock Europe 2017
- Short name: Dublin 2017
- URL: https://saastock.com/europe/2017/

## Related
- Previous edition: SaaStock Europe 2016 — https://saastock.com/europe/2016/
- Next edition: SaaStock Europe 2018 — https://saastock.com/europe/2018/
- All talks: https://saastock.com/europe/2017/talks/
- All speakers: https://saastock.com/europe/2017/speakers/