In November ‘23, we assembled a group of 100+ women leaders from venture-backed SaaS companies for a half-day P&L mastery session, offering talks on P&L fluency for every function, "First Team" leadership, and scaling networks. Since the inaugural event, we’ve hosted the event quarterly in NYC, taken it on the road to London, reached over 500 attendees, and have maintained a <2% no-show rate and NPS of +91. Multiple women told us they “wished they had been offered this program ten years earlier.”
We're excited to bring our "On the Business" Mastery Series to San Francisco for the first time in January 2025. Our program will focus heavily on P&L mastery, offering a deep dive into how to think and act like a business owner, not just a functional owner. And beyond the P&L, our sessions will offer perspectives on how to stand out as a top 1% executive more generally.
This is an invite-only, in-person event in San Francisco. The application deadline is 1/10/24, and applicants will be notified of a decision shortly after. Thanks to the support of our generous partners, Gunderson Dettmer and SVB, the event is free to attend if your application is accepted. Attendees must be available to attend all segments of this dynamic, fast-paced afternoon, and will be invited to enjoy a casual dinner with fellow attendees, speakers and investors to cap off the day.
Cassie Young, General Partner at Primary, will discuss why women often get trapped working in the business versus on the business. Cassie will offer a refresher on the concepts of "First Team" leadership and P&L fluency, including tips for avoiding the functional swim lane trap and tying your work to your company's top and bottom lines. She'll also share a perspective on what board members will be thinking about in 2025 and the metrics that will matter most.
Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast, and Sonalee Parekh, CFO at Asana, will walk through a typical SaaS P&L and provide a perspective on the metrics that matter most for your business. Expect to walk away with a more detailed understanding of everything from cash vs. accrual accounting to gross margin and EBITDA calculations, as well as a stronger command of the SaaS-specific metrics your Board is most likely to talk about.
Erica Brescia, Managing Director at Redpoint and former COO of GitHub, and April Underwood, Founder of Adverb Ventures and Former Chief Product Officer at Slack, will share tips and tricks for how executives can best set themselves up for success in board meetings - and perhaps just as interestingly, what not to do!
Jamie Domenici, CMO of Klaviyo, will share highlights from her own career journey and explain how her diverse experiences across different functional areas and GTM motions have empowered her to operate more like a Chief Market Officer than a Chief Marketing Officer. Jamie will also demystify the B2B SaaS marketing function and offer guidance on how every other function can best leverage their marketing organization.
Allison Metcalfe, CRO at Cloudinary, will talk about her path to the C-Suite and discuss how great CROs transcend the sales function and work as an "operating system" for the business at large. Allison will also offer some guidance on how to build connective tissue between sales and other business functions.
Irana Wasti, formerly Chief Product Officer at BILL and President of GoDaddy, EMEA will share her journey from product leadership into President and GM roles and offer tactical advice for how department leaders in any functional area can accelerate their path to the C-Suite. Topics will include the importance of identifying the upstream/downstream implications of your team's work across every other function, why it's critical to develop strong skill sets in other functional areas, how to create opportunities for x-functional growth and more.
A primer on Primary’s “On the Business” series for senior women in SaaS
The past decade has birthed a number of category-defining B2B SaaS unicorns, but there’s a systemic issue hidden beneath the excitement: women are woefully underrepresented at the helm of these businesses.
Just 6% of the companies recognized in the 2023 “Cloud 100” are led by women CEOs, and Work-Bench’s last #Womenterprise Report revealed that female-founded enterprise software startups represent only 2.08% of all enterprise software startups. Worst yet, the underrepresentation of women in the CEO seat has resulted in an underrepresentation of women across most of the key executive functions, particularly in go-to-market, strategy/finance and product/engineering.
Many women struggle to land and/or excel in the C-Suite because they spend too much time working in the business versus on the business. They manage their own functional lanes well, but often under-index on the 1) P&L command and 2) “First Team” working style required to succeed.
Primary is committed to changing this narrative with our “On the Business” mastery series for female executives (VP- or C-Suite) at venture-backed B2B SaaS companies.
Gunderson Dettmer is the preeminent international law firm with an exclusive focus on the innovation economy. The firm serves market-leading venture capital and growth equity investors and pioneering companies through inception, growth and maturity, as well as groundbreaking public companies that result from the global venture capital ecosystem. The firm’s clear-cut focus and well-honed technical skill enables an accelerated pace and unmatched efficiency, delivering best-in-class value at each phase of a client’s business.
Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank (“SVB”), is the bank of innovative companies and investors. With 40+ years of dedication to this sector, SVB has deep experience banking investors and innovation clients. Our entire business was purpose-built for high-growth companies and investors, and delivered at the speed they require. SVB is dedicated to the success of those who are quite literally inventing the future, and we have the full backing of 125-year-old First Citizens Bank to continue to pursue that mission.
