Linear #179: The Second Annual Vertical Software Summit
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An Exciting Announcement…
Today I’m excited to announce the second annual Vertical Software Summit.
We spent the last six months pulling together the BEST in vertical software and vertical AI — founders and executives who have actually built, scaled, and in some cases monopolized their corners of software…
Fred Voccola: The only guy (that I know of) who runs TWO billion dollar vertical software businesses, Kaseya (IT services companies) and Simpro (Trades)
Founder/CEO of OpenGov: A 15 year journey building the OS for local government and he just sold for $1.8B to Cox
The Founder/CEO of GCAI: One of the fastest growing Vertical AI companies out there. I’ve never seen growth quite like them…
The Founder/CEO of GlossGenius - probably worth $1B+. Massive business in the beauty software space.
The Founder/CEO of Valsoft - He’s bought 100+ vertical SaaS co’s and is approaching $1B of ARR. Monster business.
The Chief Business Officer of Service Titan. $1B+ of ARR. Self explanatory :-)
The Founder of a $5B+ vertical marketplace.
30+ other Founder/CEO speakers from $1M-$1B in ARR
Leading CxO’s on AI, FinTech, Customer Success, GTM, Product, and more
The founders who have actually dominated categories don’t speak in abstractions. They talk about the ugly parts:
The pricing decisions that looked wrong until they worked.
The distribution channels everyone ignored.
The product lines they killed.
The implementation bottlenecks they underestimated.
The one integration that mattered more than ten features.
The part of the workflow they thought was peripheral that ended up becoming the real wedge.
That’s where the value is.
Not in hearing polished startup advice you could get anywhere else. In hearing how category leaders actually built businesses that became hard to dislodge…
The conference is built entirely around the folks actually shaping their categories: the founders building vertical businesses and the operators scaling them.
And when you get enough of those people in one place, the conversation is something special…
If you’re a founder, you’ll leave with a better sense for what actually separates a good vertical business from a category-defining one.
If you’re an operator, you’ll hear how leading CxOs think about expansion, implementation, org design, AI adoption, and maintaining advantage as a company scales.
And then there’s the other part that makes this room unusually valuable: it’s not just founders and operators showing up…
The entire vertical investment and M&A community shows up wanting to meet YOU.
We will have ~100 ultra high quality investors and acquirers in the room that know and believe in Vertical Software and Vertical AI.
That’s why this is more than a conference.
It’s a place where the people building the category, scaling the category, and funding the category all collide in the same place.
And that’s when patterns emerge.
That’s when the quality of conversation changes.
That’s when you stop getting generic content and start getting real context.
If you’re serious about vertical software or vertical AI, that’s the kind of room that can change how you build.
So, today’s newsletter is short and sweet, but I encourage you to spend your usual time reading it to check out the Vertical AI event of the year!!
Hope to see in Miami November 4-5th, 2026…
PS - it will sell out (last year we had to turn away ~100 folks who waited until last minute to grab a ticket. Don’t do that!)