SMC Event Center to Host Bay Area’s Largest In-Person Conference Since the Pandemic

South San Francisco, CA   September 25, 2021 Press Release

 

 

 

 

5,000 people are expected to attend SaaStr Annual 2021 from September 27-29.

All attendees will be required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test result or submit to rapid testing for admission.

– In effort to safely resume large scale, in-person events, the San Mateo County Event Center will host more than 5,000 attendees at the 2021 SaaStr Annual, the world’s largest non-vendor B2B software conference. The conference, to be held September 27 -29, will be the Bay Area’s largest in-person conference since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To ensure a safe event, the three-day conference will go above and beyond the State of California’s recently released mega-event guidance by requiring all conference attendees, staff and vendors to take the following steps for admittance:

  • Submit proof of COVID-19 vaccination
  • Have proof of a negative COVID-19 rapid test within 72 hours of the conference – or –
  • Submit to a COVID-19 rapid test at the San Mateo County Event Center parking lot before being granted admission
  • Masks will be required to be worn at the registration and testing area in addition to any indoor areas at the Event Center

To help coordinate the thousands of rapid tests on site at the Event Center, SaaStr has partnered with US Mobile Health Exams, the leading provider of on-site health testing services.

“When it comes to public health in large scale events, frequent rapid COVID testing with quick turnaround times is the tool that will get us back to normalcy and breathe life back into the events world,” said Paul Hassan, Owner of US Mobile Health Exams. “Rapid testing is an affordable and effective method to accomplish these goals.”

Once admitted to the Event Center grounds, attendees will notice one big difference in this year’s event. For the first time ever, all SaaStr activities, meetings and presentations will be held outdoors on the Event Center’s grounds.

“SaaStr Annual has been in the Bay Area since its inception in 2015. It’s a testament to our team and our partners in San Mateo County that we’re able to safely and comfortably host an all outdoors, festival style event for our SaaS community”, said Jason Lemkin, CEO and founder of SaaStr.  “This is one of the biggest SaaS events in the United States with 5,000 people attending in-person and advanced health and safety guidelines in effect.”

The SaaStr Annual Conference will be the first major business gathering to be held in-person in San Mateo County and the largest in-person business conference in the Bay Area since California began loosening COVID-19 restrictions in June. SaaStr has been working closely in conjunction with both the San Mateo County / Silicon Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the San Mateo County Event Center to ensure the safety of all attendees.

“San Mateo County is open for business and we are excited to host SaaStr Annual 2021,” said John Hutar, President and CEO of the San Mateo County / Silicon Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We look forward to safely welcoming thousands of visitors to San Mateo County for this year’s event. As the meetings and events industry gets back to business as usual, the health protocols in place for SaaStr Annual will become the gold standard for the safe operation of large-scale conferences moving forward.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the San Mateo County Event Center has served the Silicon Valley community as a mass testing site, field hospital and drive-through vaccination clinic for more than 100,000 people. The services provided played a pivitol role in 93% of San Mateo County residents recieveing at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. After successfully hosting the first large scale county fair in California this past summer, the Event Center continues to lead the Bay Area in safely resuming operation of mega events.

“We welcome SaaStr to the San Mateo County Event Center,” said Dana Stoehr, CEO of the San Mateo County Event Center. “The SaaStr organizers have made the health and safety of all event staff and attendees their highest priorty. We applaud their commitment, ensuring everyone has taken all precautions possible to gather safely.”

The three-day conference will bring together more than 25,000 hybrid attendees (in-person and virtually) made up of global SaaS founders, executives and venture capitalists for a series of high-quality content sessions and networking opportunities. Top executives expected to speak at the event include: Anjali Sud, CEO at Vimeo, Jennifer Tejada, CEO at PagerDuty, Ali Ghodsi, CEO at Databricks, Ariel Cohen, CEO of TripActions, Olivier Pomel, CEO of Datadog, Stephanie Buscemi, CMO of Confluent, Sara Varni Bright, CMO of Twilio, Lakshmi Hanspal, Global Chief Security Officer of Box, and many others.

More information about the SaaStr Annual conference can be found online at www.saastrannual.com

About SaaStr
SaaStr is the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders and entrepreneurs.  Our mission is to share the best learnings, insights and practices around building and scaling SaaS and Cloud businesses. Founded in 2012 by serial enterprise entrepreneur Jason M. Lemkin, SaaStr has grown into a social community of more than 500,000 SaaS founders and executives with over 3,000,000 monthly views, and two major industry conferences. SaaStr’s goal is to help every SaaS entrepreneur get from $0 to $100M ARR with less stress. Learn more at SaaStr.com.

About the San Mateo County/Silicon Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau
The San Mateo County/Silicon Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau is a destination sales and marketing organization. The organization’s objective is to attract meetings, conventions, business, and individual travelers, thereby enhancing the economic growth in San Mateo County, CA.

About the San Mateo Event Center:
For the past year, the San Mateo Event Center has been unable to host many events, but instead played a vital role in protecting our health care workers and most vulnerable populations by service as a COVID-19 testing site, operations hub and supply center, 250-bed temporary overflow hospital, and vaccine distribution center for the San Francisco Bay Area. To date, the Event Center has administered 250,000 COVID-19 tests and vaccinated more than 100,000 individuals.

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