This August, BizDev experts will descend upon Miami Beach for inaugural Catalyst conference

By Riley Kaminer

Managing B2B partnerships is a mixture of an art and a science. In the SaaS world, a lot is riding on this business development: it can be the difference between exponential growth and deadly stagnation.

On August 24th and 25th, BizDev leaders have the opportunity to talk shop with some of the top experts in the space at Catalyst, the inaugural conference for partnership management. Confirmed attendees include CEOs and other high-level representatives from Google, Salesforce, Asana, MailChimp, HubSpot, Oktoa, Hopin, Zapier, and Miami-based Ryder.

The conference itself boasts an action-packed schedule, kicking off with a luncheon focused on women and non-binary parternship leaders. Other notable sessions include:

• “How to Drive More Revenue by Supporting Developers.” Presented by Kelly Sarabyn, a platform ecosystem advocate at Hubspot.
• “How to drive distribution through strategic partnerships.” Featuring representatives from Google, Hubspot, Allbound, and Aircall.
• “Partnerships – It Takes a Few to Tango.” Presented by Brian Stavis, global category lead in advertising and marketing technology for AWS Marketplace.

Organizers are also hoping for Mayor Suarez to join co-founder Asher Mathew for a recap of the event at the end of the second day.

Alongside these panel and keynote-style events will be a variety of training sessions and ample networking opportunities. And it wouldn’t be a #MiamiTech event without a yacht party to end things on a grand note.

On top of leading this event, Mathew is also co-founder of Partnership Leaders, the organization hosting this event. Partnership Leaders is a network of over 1,000 tech professionals who work in the partnerships space. Through the organization, members can get career advice, insights into the field, and access to educational content and resources.

“We are the trailblazers of modern BizDev,” Mathew told Refresh Miami. “Miami’s a hot spot for everything that’s fresh,” he said – so it was a logical destination for Catalyst. Mathew and team were also attracted to Miami because of the diversity in tech talent. In particular, they were impressed by the high number of women in leadership roles. This tracks with Partnership Leaders’ membership, which is 40% female (women make up less than a quarter of the tech industry overall).

Mathew’s goal for the conference is to accelerate the professional and personal success of partnership leaders. “Before we founded Partnership Leaders, if you were to search for information about becoming a partnership leader, you wouldn’t find anything,” he noted. Mathew hopes that events such as this conference will help inform this next generation of BizDev experts.

Catalyst will focus on the SaaS market because it is the industry where the most innovation is happening, asserted Mathew. It also helps that Mathew and co-founders Chris Samila and Tai Rattigan are all software veterans. “The biggest need is in SaaS,” he added, noting however that the organization plans to broaden its scope in the future. 

For Mathew, this is only Partnership Leaders’ first foray into the Miami ecosystem. He has already met with local leaders to share how becoming a partnership leader is a viable – and potentially quite lucrative – career for Miamians. Mathew is particularly excited to meet local companies involved in the partnership leader space this August.

Interested in attending this year’s Catalyst conference? Learn more and register by visiting JoinCatalyst.com.

WHAT: Catalyst, a conference where partnerships, ecosystem, and business development teams come to make connections, learn from each other, and accelerate growth

WHERE: Miami Beach Convention Center

WHEN: August 24 & 25

WEBSITE: JoinCatalyst.com

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