SaaStock in Dublin gathers SaaS founders, operators and investors, with a strong European emphasis. For exhibitors it is one of the most concentrated gatherings of SaaS decision-makers in the calendar.
It also has a structural quirk that shapes everything about lead capture: almost everyone in the room is selling something too.
The mutual-pitch problem
At a typical trade show, the exhibitor sells and the visitor evaluates. At SaaStock, a large share of booth conversations are two founders pitching each other simultaneously, each waiting for their turn.
This produces a specific failure: a friendly, energetic twenty-minute conversation that generates a lead record saying "great chat, follow up" — and nobody can later determine whether that person was a prospect, a partner, a peer, or someone who was selling to you.
The single most valuable field at SaaStock is direction of value. Capture it explicitly:
- Prospect — could buy from us
- Partner — integration or co-selling opportunity
- Peer — useful relationship, no transaction
- Vendor — selling to us
- Investor
Without that field, the follow-up list is a coin flip.
Stage determines everything else
The second most important field is company stage, because at SaaStock it decides whether a purchase is possible at all.
A pre-seed founder with eight people and an eighteen-month runway is not going to buy an enterprise-priced tool, however enthusiastic the conversation. A Series B company with a RevOps function might buy this quarter.
Capture:
- Stage — bootstrapped, pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B+
- ARR band — founders at SaaStock are unusually open about this
- Team size — and specifically the size of the team relevant to your product
- Current tooling in your category — SaaS operators know their stack precisely
- Buying authority — at early stage the founder decides; later there is a process
The tech stack question is the best qualifier
SaaS attendees answer stack questions readily and accurately, which makes it an efficient qualifier.
"What are you using for that today?"
The answer tells you displacement versus greenfield, budget precedent, integration requirements, and rough sophistication — all in one sentence. It also gives you something concrete to reference in the follow-up.
Irish law: one-party consent, but the DPC matters
SaaStock is in Dublin. Ireland has no general prohibition on recording a conversation you participate in — it is effectively a one-party consent jurisdiction on the criminal question.
GDPR applies in full through the Data Protection Act 2018, supervised by the Data Protection Commission (DPC). The DPC is a disproportionately significant regulator because so many technology companies have their European headquarters in Ireland, and it is lead supervisory authority for many of them.
Practically, ask anyway:
- Ask before recording, get an explicit yes
- Keep the indicator visible
- Log the consent
- Stop on objection
At an event full of SaaS founders — many of whom deal with GDPR in their own products — a rep who asks properly signals competence. One who does not, signals the opposite.
A workable SaaStock process
Before
- Make direction of value a required CRM field
- Add stage and ARR band fields
- Prepare the stack-question qualifier
- Decide in advance what stage you can actually sell to, and brief the team to route the rest to a nurture track rather than the pipeline
During
- Establish direction early — a friendly conversation is not automatically a lead
- Ask the stack question
- Ask consent before recording
- Agree an explicit next step; SaaStock conversations evaporate without one
Each evening
Review nightly. SaaStock is dense and social, and by the second evening the first day's conversations blur badly.
After
Follow up within 48 hours, referencing the stack answer. That single detail distinguishes your email from every other post-SaaStock message.
The economics
A SaaStock stand plus team travel to Dublin is a meaningful spend for an early-stage company — often a material fraction of a quarter's marketing budget.
The characteristic failure is not too few conversations. It is a list of eighty enthusiastic conversations with no direction field, no stage field, and no stack detail — from which the team can extract perhaps five real opportunities and gives up trying.
Capturing direction, stage and stack at the moment of conversation is what makes the list usable. That is what Confee is built to do — structured, qualified fields in the CRM before the next conversation starts.
The short version
At SaaStock everyone is pitching. Capture which way the value runs, capture stage, ask what they use today, and follow up inside 48 hours with that detail.
Eighty friendly conversations with no direction field are worth less than twenty qualified ones.
Related reading:
- Lead Capture for SaaS Conferences — the sector playbook
- Event Lead Scoring — building the qualification model
- The 60-Second Discovery Playbook — qualifying fast
FAQ
What makes SaaStock lead capture different?
Almost everyone is a seller as well as a buyer. Many booth conversations are two founders pitching each other, so the critical field is which direction the value runs — prospect, partner, peer, or someone selling to you.
Who attends SaaStock?
SaaS founders, executives, revenue operators and investors in Dublin, with a strong European emphasis. Company sizes skew early and growth stage rather than enterprise.
Does Irish law allow recording conversations at SaaStock?
Ireland has no general prohibition on recording a conversation you participate in, making it effectively one-party consent. GDPR applies in full through the Data Protection Act 2018, supervised by the DPC.
What should exhibitors capture at SaaStock?
Company stage and ARR band, team size, relevant tech stack, whether they are a prospect or partner, current tooling in your category, and any introduction offered. Stage matters most — it determines whether they can buy at all.