# Speaking at Startup Conferences: Stages for Founders and Investors

Author: Marin Niehues, Stage Starter · Published: 2026-05-28
Topic: Finding Conferences (https://www.stage-starter.de/en/blog/topic/finding-conferences/)
Source: https://www.stage-starter.de/en/blog/speaking-at-startup-conferences/

The speakers at startup conferences are mostly successful founders and investors, and the programme team usually fills the big stages by invitation. A startup conference is an event where founders meet investors and established companies, often as a festival over several days with many stages. For founders, it is a place for funding and hiring as well as for visibility in the scene. Clients are less often in the room, because three quarters of the revenue of German startups comes from business customers, and those customers attend the specialist conferences of their own industry. This article shows who speaks at startup conferences, which formats exist and which stage is right for which goal.

**Startup conferences bring founders together with investors and with their own scene. If your startup wants to win business customers, you also belong on the specialist conferences of the industry those customers work in.**

## Who speaks at startup conferences?

The speakers at startup conferences are founders whose companies have already grown, along with investors from venture capital funds and executives from technology companies. The big festivals mostly put their programmes together themselves. Slush in Helsinki, one of the largest startup gatherings in Europe, states on its speaker page that its stages primarily feature the most accomplished founders and operators, meaning people who have built a company in day-to-day practice. As a not-for-profit, Slush says it does not pay speakers, and speakers in turn pay nothing to Slush.

In Germany, Bits & Pretzels in Munich is the best-known example. For 2025, the founders festival expected around 7,500 participants from the founder and investor scene as well as from established companies, and it combines talks on several stages with a networking day at the Oktoberfest. There, so-called table captains, selected founders and investors as well as executives, lead conversations at individual tables. The main stages of such festivals belong to well-known names from business and public life, and the route there runs through invitation.

Conferences in the software and SaaS world work with open applications more often. SaaStr Annual in the US, one of the largest conferences for founders of subscription software companies, collects proposals through an application form. According to its founder, SaaStr receives thousands of applications every year for its stages and formats, of which around one per cent is accepted. The organiser's guidelines name companies with 2 to 200 million US dollars in annual recurring revenue as the target group for speakers, rule out product pitches and give sponsors no places in the editorial programme.

**Startups and their customers**
- 74.8 per cent | of German startup revenue comes from business customers
- 56.0 per cent | of startups cooperate with established companies
- around 1 per cent | of applications accepted by SaaStr, by its own account

## Which formats exist at startup conferences?

Startup conferences have five common formats: the talk on one of the stages, the panel, the fireside chat, the pitch competition and small conversation rounds at tables. The talk is usually shorter than at specialist conferences, often 15 to 30 minutes, and relies on a story backed by numbers from your own company. The panel brings three to five voices together, frequently founders and investors side by side, and is almost always filled by the programme team. The fireside chat is a moderated interview with a single person on stage.

The pitch competition is the format many founders first associate with startup conferences. Young companies present their business model in a few minutes to a jury and an audience of investors. A pitch is an application for capital or attention, so it follows different rules from an expert talk: it may and should sell your own company. For winning B2B clients it is weaker, because the room is mostly filled with investors and other founders.

Large technology festivals also sell young companies exhibitor packages with stand space and tickets, sometimes including a chance to pitch. If you buy a real speaking slot through a sponsorship, you quickly pay 10,000 euros or more for a single speaking slot. Sponsored sessions are often not labelled in the programme, but the audience recognises them by their content. When a paid slot pays off is explained in the article [Sponsored talks and pay to speak](/en/blog/do-speakers-have-to-pay-for-the-stage/).

## Which stage brings founders clients?

Founders win clients at the specialist conference of the industry their startup sells to, far more than at the startup festival. The German Startup Monitor 2025 published by the German Startups Association shows that 74.8 per cent of the revenue of German startups is generated with business customers. These customers are purchasing managers in industry, IT leads at mid-sized companies or HR directors at corporations, and they inform themselves at the conferences of their own field. A startup building software for logistics finds its buyers at a logistics conference, and a startup with HR software finds them at an HR conference.

The same survey shows a second development: the share of startups cooperating with established companies fell from 61.9 per cent in the previous year to 56.0 per cent. A direct line to established companies is therefore part of everyday business for fewer startups than a year earlier. A specialist conference puts founders in a room where these companies are listening, and a stage builds more trust than an exhibition stand because the programme committee selected the person. Why a specialist conference works so well as a sales channel is described in the article [The specialist conference as a sales channel](/en/blog/industry-conference-as-a-sales-channel/).

For investors, the same mechanism applies with a different goal. If you speak at a startup conference as an investor, you gain visibility among founders and with it access to new investments, which the scene calls deal flow. Investors with an industry focus, for example in manufacturing or healthcare, also reach the established companies at that industry's specialist conferences that later act as buyers or partners of their portfolio companies.

**A B2B startup grows through two stages: the festival of the founder scene, where it finds capital and visibility, and the specialist conference of its target industry, where its clients are listening. It gets onto the specialist conference through submissions to the programme committee.**

## How do founders and investors get onto the stage?

Founders, like investors, get onto the stage through invitations, open calls and direct approaches. Invitations go mainly to people whose companies have visibly grown or who are well known in the scene. Open calls are known as calls for papers or calls for speakers, the public process through which a conference collects talk proposals. Specialist conferences use them far more often than startup festivals, and there the topic counts for more than the profile of the company. How the process runs from the call to the acceptance is explained in the [guide to calls for papers](/en/blog/call-for-papers-guide/).

For a young company, that is an advantage. A programme committee, the group of experts who decide on submissions, accepts a talk at a specialist conference that sheds light on a problem of the industry with data from its own work. A startup that has worked with twenty clients in mechanical engineering knows patterns from those projects that are new to the audience of an industrial conference. The talk shows this knowledge and leaves out the product presentation that the committee would otherwise reject.

For conferences without an open call, the route runs through an email to the programme team with a proposal tailored to that one conference. In both cases, the volume of submissions decides the result of a year. At the volume of submissions needed for a plannable operation, the market norm is 5 per cent at most of conferences saying yes, and in our own submissions for clients we reach up to 19 per cent per conference. Across ten conferences, the chance of at least one acceptance is roughly 40 per cent at 5 per cent, and roughly 88 per cent at 19 per cent.

## What an agency takes on for startups

[Stage Starter](/en/) takes on this work for you: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it. For startups, this means finding the specialist conferences of the industries your company sells to and turning the knowledge from your projects into talks a programme committee accepts. We develop the talk and abstracts with you, the short descriptions of the planned talks, approach organisers without an open call by email, follow up and support you after an acceptance all the way to the stage. What an agency brings young companies in detail is described in the article [Speaker agency for startups](/en/blog/speaker-agency-for-startups/).

You provide the expertise and sign off the talk and abstracts once before we start. You lead the conversations after the talk yourself, because that is where contact with your future clients begins. No agency can guarantee an acceptance, as the programme committee of each conference decides.

**Three routes to a stage with clients in the room**
Criterion | Submitting yourself | Sponsorship or exhibitor package | Stage Starter
Who finds the specialist conferences of your target industry | you, alongside product and funding | not needed, the slot is bought | we do, based on your target clients
How the audience sees you | as an expert, if you are accepted | as a vendor with sales intent | as a selected expert
What it costs | working days every month | quickly 10,000 euros or more for a single speaking slot | from 990 euros net per month for the whole operation

Working with Stage Starter starts from 990 euros net per month. If you want a written roadmap first, you start with the Speaker Audit from 2,000 euros net. For a comparison with speaking fees, a simple calculation applies: a single business client won from a talk is worth more to a startup than any fee, and startup festivals generally pay their speakers nothing anyway. How speaker fees are distributed in the market is shown in [Speaker fees](/en/blog/speaker-fees-guide/).

**Startup conferences are the stage for capital and hiring as well as for visibility in the founder scene, and their big programmes run by invitation. Founders win B2B clients at the specialist conferences of their target industry, and the route there runs through many targeted submissions.**

**Sources**
- German Startup Monitor 2025 by the German Startups Association (Bundesverband Deutsche Startups): revenue shares by customer group and share of startups with cooperations.
- Information from Slush on how speakers are selected and paid.
- Guidelines and statements from the organiser of SaaStr Annual on applications and acceptance as well as on sponsors.
- Information from the organiser of Bits & Pretzels on participants and table captains.
- Stage Starter analysis of our own submissions for clients: up to 19 per cent acceptances per conference.

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I become a speaker at a startup conference?

You become a speaker at a startup conference through an invitation from the programme team, an application in the open call or a direct approach with a tailored proposal. The big festivals mainly invite founders whose companies have visibly grown. Specialist conferences with an open call, by contrast, judge mainly by the topic.

### Are speakers at startup conferences paid?

Speakers at startup conferences generally receive no fee, and Slush, for example, rules out fees by its own account. Fees are paid mainly by companies for internal events. The ranges are 1,000 to 3,000 euros for newcomers, 3,000 to 6,000 euros for established experts, 6,000 to 15,000 euros for well-known keynote speakers and 15,000 to 50,000 euros or more for celebrities.

### Does a startup have to pay to speak at a conference?

A startup pays nothing for a talk in the editorial programme, where the programme team decides on acceptance. What costs money are exhibitor packages and sponsorships, and a sponsorship with a speaking slot quickly costs 10,000 euros or more for a single speaking slot. Many large conferences explicitly keep sponsors out of the editorial programme.

### What is the difference between a pitch and a talk?

A pitch is a short presentation of your business model with which a startup applies for capital or a prize. A talk shares expertise and presents no offer. For investors the pitch is the right format, and for business clients at a specialist conference the talk is.

### Which topics work at startup conferences?

Topics work at startup conferences when other founders can learn from them directly, for example funding and growth as well as sales and team building. Stories backed by numbers from your own company have the strongest effect. At specialist conferences, what counts instead is which problem of the industry a talk sheds light on with data.

### Is a startup conference worth it for winning clients?

A startup conference is worth it for winning clients if your own clients are startups or investors themselves. For startups that sell to established companies, the specialist conferences of the target industry bring more client contacts. Around three quarters of the revenue of German startups comes from business customers.

### Why do investors speak at startup conferences?

Investors speak at startup conferences to become visible to founders and so gain access to new investments. They usually appear on panels or in fireside chats. Investors with an industry focus also reach established companies as future partners at specialist conferences.

### Can an agency get a startup onto conferences?

An agency can find the right specialist conferences for a startup and submit or write to organisers on its behalf. At Stage Starter, we develop the talk and abstracts with you, submit, follow up and support you all the way to the stage. No agency can guarantee an acceptance, because the programme committee decides.

We are happy to clarify in an [initial consultation](/en/erstgespraech/) whether the specialist conferences with your target clients are within reach for your startup.