The third edition of SaaStanak will take place from May 25 to 27, 2026, in Šibenik, Croatia, bringing together SaaS founders, C-level executives, and operators from across Europe and beyond. The event will be hosted at Amadria Park Šibenik and is designed specifically for people who lead teams, make strategic decisions, and are actively involved in growing software companies.
Unlike broad startup conferences, SaaStanak is positioned as a highly focused gathering for practitioners. Its agenda centers on topics with a direct and measurable impact on SaaS businesses, including go-to-market strategies, product and engineering, organizational design, and leadership during different growth stages. The emphasis is on first-hand experience and practice-driven discussions rather than abstract theory.
Confirmed keynote speakers
The first confirmed keynote speakers for SaaStanak 2026 reflect the event’s practitioner-first philosophy.
Kyle Poyar, a SaaS growth advisor and author of the widely read Growth Unhinged newsletter, brings deep expertise in SaaS benchmarks, pricing and packaging, AI product monetization, product-led growth, and go-to-market strategy. His newsletter reaches more than 80,000 founders and operators weekly, and he works one-on-one with SaaS companies navigating rapid growth.
Chris Cunningham is an experienced SaaS operator and investor and a founding member of ClickUp, the $4 billion–valued SaaS company. He played a key role in building and scaling one of the fastest-growing SaaS businesses globally, with a particular focus on content production and brand building through social media. At SaaStanak 2026, he plans to share ClickUp’s experience in addressing what he sees as the defining challenge for tech products in 2026: distribution.
Jen Igartua, CEO of Go Nimbly, is a seasoned leader in revenue operations with extensive hands-on experience aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams. She works closely with SaaS companies on building scalable RevOps models, growth processes, and organizational alignment. Her sessions will focus on execution and the realities of working with revenue teams during growth and scaling phases.
Nick Velkovski, co-founder and CEO of HeyReach, represents one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the Balkans, which recently surpassed $10 million in annual recurring revenue. A SaaS founder and operator, Velkovski focuses on go-to-market strategy, outbound growth, and product scaling, with particular attention to founder branding, execution speed, and building global teams.
A format designed for real learning and real conversations
SaaStanak 2026 is structured to encourage meaningful interaction rather than quick, transactional networking. The format allows for in-depth conversations between speakers and participants, ample time for discussion and context, and networking that goes beyond short conference encounters. The goal is to enable the exchange of concrete experiences, decisions, and lessons learned from real-world SaaS operations.
Blind bird tickets are available until December 19, 2025. Additional details about the program, speakers, and tickets can be found on the official event website.
Leonard Eldic, founder of SaaStanak, explains that the 2026 edition represents a deliberate shift toward hands-on learning.
“The event is structured around morning keynotes followed by afternoon “schools” focused on go-to-market, product and engineering, and founder sessions. This format is designed to cover the core challenges of scaling SaaS companies, with the explicit aim that every attendee leaves with a clear action plan for themselves and their team, as well as meaningful contacts who can help execute it,” Eldic explains.
He notes that SaaStanak evolved from practical, regionally focused meetups into a conference that now primarily brings in experts from Europe and the US to support companies from the region as they scale. From the beginning, the goal was never to become a startup conference centered on fundraising. As a result, investors do not give talks; the stage is reserved for SaaS founders and operators who have built and scaled products themselves.
He also highlights what he sees as a core problem with many conferences: lack of focus. “As events grow, they often broaden their target audience, which dilutes both the program and the quality of discussion. SaaStanak deliberately takes the opposite approach, creating an environment where deep dives are encouraged and there is no need to reset the conversation for attendees at very different levels of SaaS maturity,” Eldic notes.
According to him, there are already enough inspirational events, but too few that address the concrete scaling challenges faced by companies from the region, such as hiring, distribution focus, team structure, and expansion into US and Western European markets. SaaStanak, he emphasizes, is not for everyone – it is for companies with real revenue and real operational problems beyond fundraising, and that is very much by design.
