Welcome to another Benchmark special! I get asked for more of this quite often and, as it's Easter, it's a bit of a recycle. So this is a compilation of benchmark data reported from across the webs….​

1. EXPANSION: Just acquiring customers isn’t enough of a strategy for long-term success: Expansion strategies are pragmatic growth practices that any good SaaS company needs to get a grip on as 37% of new ARR bookings are attributable to cross-sell/up-sell activities. Here is what good expansion looks like. OpenView Partners have gone to town to benchmark this metric with an extensive Expansion SaaS Benchmarks report. Product Led Growth businesses leads the pack!
2. RETENTION. To compliment #2 above, retention is deeply related to expansion as it relates to sustainable growth, and here is what good retention goals should be benchmarked against and how to optimize them.
3. CAC: This one needs nuance, David Skok, the godfather of SaaS Metrics has broken it down into i) blended, ii) new, iii) up-sell, and iv) expansion. It's getting hard out there though -  Every dollar of new revenue in 2020 costs $1.60 (compared to $1.35 in 2019). Up-sell and cross-sell still remain the CAC bargain, but it’s still up YoY, with each dollar of new revenue costing $0.69 in 2020 (it was $0.61 in 2019). Big impacts on sales efficiency. This chart alone highlights why having a customer-focused strategy is critical for growth. 
4. GROWTH: Median organic ARR growth for the year surveyed (2018) was 36%. Thus is across 424 SaaS businesses distributed globally (but 2/3 of which were US-domiciled). This rate is pretty evenly split across different contract size businesses - so there is no obvious relationship between ACV and growth. Companies surveyed average a median ARR of $8.7m 
5. MARKETING AND SALES: Hubspot continues to benchmark Pandemic-times data for core business metrics like website traffic, email send and open rates, sales engagements, close rates, and more (aggregated from their global customer base of over 70,000 companies). It’s an incredibly useful tool as a benchmark to measure your business against. Explore all the benchmark data here or check this week's summary here. Chorus.ai is doing something similar by benchmarking sales organizations (daily!) across their user base. A recent Tomasz Tunguz summary can be found here.
6. GTM: Current and pragmatic Go-To-Market benchmarks are presented in this deck from Tomasz Tunguz and the team at Redpoint Ventures. Some good findings from their survey: 1) If SDR/BDR teams hit their numbers, so do Account Executives; 2) Most sales teams ramp Account Executives in about six months; 3) Marketing teams spend 5-10% of a companies ARR. David Skok also observes that the primary mode of Sales and Marketing efforts remains Field Sales based, with Inside Sales taking a very close second strategy for smaller businesses (under $10m ARR)
7. UX: Optimizing a User Experience is key to the long-term success of any service or product. Google is all over this and just launched Web Vitals, a program that offers developers guidance about best practice benchmarks on user experience. It’s benchmarking very Google-based metrics: loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
8. PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: It’s a weird open secret that a lot of B2B SaaS businesses generate a significant amount of revenue from implementation and deployment projects, often captured as revenue from Professional Services, due to deployment and configuration complexity. So what are the revenue benchmarks for a SaaS Business to captured revenue through professional services? On average it caps out at 11% of all annual revenue with Enterprise-focused businesses but even at the lower end of town it’s still 5% of revenues with SMB focused businesses.
9. SPEND: Figuring out how to optimize marketing spend and growth rate is a key question and this study doesn’t show great benchmarks - the percentage of revenue in pretty much equals percentage growth out, but with an ever-increasing range of outcomes as spend increases per business. More solid benchmarks are with the Sales vs Marketing spend ratios which stay at about 2:1 regardless of market-facing strategies (although Mixed is a bit of an outlier).
10. BOOTSTRAPPERS: This is for all of you choosing the do-it-without-investors route: The latest State of Independent SaaS Report based on hundreds of non-venture track, revenue-generating SaaS companies. It has really great Bootstrapped benchmarks: growth rates, demographics, validation approaches, and more.

POD OF THE WEEK: Of course it’s going to be How to Succeed at SaaS with David Skok

One of my favorite sessions to attend every year at SaaStr is the Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud Report. It's a fantastic, detailed, deep dive into micro and macro trends, forecasts, and industry predictions. This year SaaStr release was a Cloud edition but here are the Presentation files and link to the full presentation page on their website - or if this is your thing: The PDF version. They also finish off with top predictions for 2021 (which I feel we already did to death here - so that part is skipped - here if you want to read more - because it's good)

1. MARKET CAP: Cloud companies have thrived in 2020 with a record-breaking market cap of more than $2 trillion! For context, two years ago (February 2019) the collective value of the cloud index was $690 billion
2. VALUATIONS: Cloud multiples are rising to new heights - AVERAGE is 20x!!!! That's an increase of over 150% in the last five years. Why? Growth rates - that don't quit - the average is 40%
3. PUBLIC CLOUD: AWS continues to dominate public cloud - but MSFT is growing share fast (And Public cloud is now greater than $2 trillion). AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Ali Cloud. All of them enjoy more than 50% growth annually.
4. PRIVATE CLOUD: There is more demand than supply for cloud assets, with a 10x increase in investments into private cloud companies. It is clear that cloud computing will become a majority of enterprise software by 2025 - which leads onto #5 below:
5. UNICORNS: The number of private unicorns has doubled in the past two years (527 of them) with a cumulative value of $1,964 Billion) and this growth shows no sign of slowing
6. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: Went bonkers - high demand, high multiples, high growth rates, and large access to capital means that 2020 is the best time in history to be a private cloud company founder
7. GROWTH 1 - Usage-based pricing models: When Bessemer release these reports, they also share insights into how to drive go-to-market strategies - starting with usage-based pricing models. This strategy goes hand in hand with PLG (see below). Usage-based pricing helps minimize friction during customer onboarding, as customers only pay for what they’re using. This strategy typically sees best-in-class net-dollar retention results.
8. GROWTH 2 - Product-Led Growth: PLG (if you didn't already get the hint from this newsletter) has been growing over the past several years as the ubiquity of solutions and increased automation has pushed purchasing decisions down to the end-user. The cumulative market cap of product-led growth companies has grown more than 100x in six years.
9. GROWTH 3 - Cloud marketplaces: This should come as no surprise to anyone who has Shopify, Atlassian, or Salesforce partner experience. - but here are some good stats: SaaS businesses experience 50% faster sales cycles on average through cloud marketplaces; revenue generated through cloud marketplaces is predicted to reach $3B in 2021.
10. FAANG IS DEAD: Well not really - the old Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet (aka Google) championship team of high performing technology companies are going gangbusters (330% return over the last 4 years) but have been superseded by a new (and slightly less cool but more mountainous) acronym of the top publicly traded tech companies - MT SAAS. Microsoft, Twilio, Salesforce, Amazon, Adobe, and Shopify (803% return).

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POD OF THE WEEK: The 45 minute long Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud report or alternatively check the SaaStr Podcast share the latest trends and predictions for the cloud marketplace.

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: The three key interrelated metrics you need to build a great startup (CAC, LTV, and payback period).
2. SALES: Being the first sales rep at a SaaS startup is challenging for both the rep and the founders. Here are some reasons why and here is what you can do about it (and make sure the good ones never leave) - hint it's the Comp Plan!
3. SELLING: In the COVID/WFH current norm, remote recruiting, remote pitching, and remote selling are new skills we are all learning. So for all of you now selling remote, or if your customers are so globally distributed, selling remote IS the norm, check this sweet guide from Hubspot and Vidyar containing 10 proven Video Script and email templates for remote selling.
4. JTBD: Jobs to be Done is one of my favorite frameworks - it's a way to make the process of innovation accessible and tangible in very pragmatic ways. Take a deeper read here on a lightweight JTBD framework - broken down with real-world business examples - or skip straight to the templates
5. CONTENT MARKETING: Great content marketing efforts are what make this newsletter work, here is an extensive review of SaaS Content marketing, with the efforts of over 500 companies being analyzed. TL;DR Blog and write (but do it well), be consistent, test, and always offer something valuable in your content. Also, be sure to check this Content Marketing Benchmark report that analyzed 150,000,000 page views from dozens of SaaS companies! (TL;DR: 60% of total traffic came from organic search and was the fastest-growing channel (9%); deliver value within the first 400 words; Create tutorial content)
6. CUSTOMER RETENTION: The global pandemic has been rough for everyone, including, quite possibly, your customers. So here is a customer retention strategy well aligned for 2021 (using the thriving-striving-surviving health score). It's also really important to conduct a solid churn analysis (starting with a breakdown of internal vs external reasons).
7. MOATS: I've mentioned this in past posts, Moats are one of the best ways to provide a competitive advantage for your business and moats come in all kinds of different flavors (such as speed, brand, or growth). But here is a great one that conceptually covers b2b and b2c: Emotion. When it comes to pure B2B this post lists some popular and effective ways companies create moats for their products.
8. PRODUCT LEAD GROWTH: You may have heard me talk about this category from time to time. But here is a sub-category term for you: Product-Led Storytelling. PLG isn’t for everyone, some people, like the author of this article, call it hype, but probably so he can hammer home his agenda/story: That Product-Led Storytelling is way cooler. 
9. GOVERNANCE: Alexander Jarvis has a great post on when and how to start thinking about forming a board and Mark Suster (from Upfront Ventures) has a series on his Medium Blog covering StartUp Boards one of which is a post that shows a board structure based on stage! He also provides a blog post AND a 43 slide presentation on Managing Startup Boards with really interesting (for founders at least) continuous integration/agile approaches to management.
10. CASE STUDY: This week, it is all about Postmortem lessons learned: From Tracy Young (co-founder of PlanGrid), The truth about starting a Startup, and Calvin French-Owen (co-founder of Segment) has lessons for early-stage founders.

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POD OF THE WEEK:  “Jobs to be done” adding on to #4 above - it isn’t a phrase, it’s a methodology for getting stuff done - listen more on the concept here. 

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: NRG - Natural Rate of Growth. Now that I’ve slow-burn convinced a bunch of people subscribed to this newsletter to go all-in with Product Lead Growth (PLG), it’s time to reference the metrics you need to know. It requires us to get halfway through this article before that becomes clear. But hey - it’s totally worth the scroll. With Natural Rate of Growth (NRG), the assumption is that a PLG business has an organic, self-service growth engine at their core (because they’re built to attract the end-user). Keep reading as the article comes complete with benchmarks towards the bottom. Hungry for more best-practice PLG metrics? I got ya!
2. DEATH TO SAAS: Made ya look! Last week I discussed the challenges of adding value via data into pricing for a subscription/SaaS company - This TechCrunch article takes this premise further highlighting that many SaaS Companies are shifting to usage-based models (full confirmation-bias disclosure - I operate a hybrid pricing model).
3. EMAIL (deep dive): On the non-PLG end - Cold email outreach is a go-to modern-day sales tool but this method historically has very low response rates (1% for cold emails historically but it dropped below 1% for the first time in 2019!). 1. Jason Bay has some spot-on methods to optimize response rates, 2. Predictable Revenue has this PowerPoint deck on the four pillars they think constitutes a quality sales-based email campaign. 3. This is a quality case study for anyone with email marketing as part of their businesses - a deep dive into a single cold email and why the author actually opened it (TL;DR - yes it’s all about everything in the emails design, but its more about how targeted the message is). 4. So here (from LeadIQ) is their 3-step guide to getting noticed by email.
4. PRICING FEATURETTE: Adding on from last week (as it was a popular post) - FUN FACT: On average, a 1 percent price increase translates into an 8.7 percent increase in operating profits - but optimizing Pricing is hard and it’s never (ever) perfect. a) If companies decide to have a pricing page on their site (which is a whole other topic), Jason Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr, lays out some thoughts of what makes a good pricing page. b) McKinsey gets technical, outlining how to leverage big data to make better pricing decisions. c) Want to look at competitor prices? Comptera has a great article on how to conduct a high-fidelity competitive pricing analysis project.
5. SALES: This article challenges us all to sell something bigger than your boring ass product. It’s similar to the mindset of "The Jobs That Need to be Done” discussed in earlier posts, making the point that the true sales value is something that genuinely helps users get better or more successful at what they do.
6. FOUNDERS: A great (but uncomfortable for many) article on the lessons learned through the journey of a startup……..which may not end with a founder in charge: "A founder creates something from nothing. A CEO manages something that already exists. They’re two totally different jobs"
7. BOOTSTRAPPED: Bootstrapping is a perfectly awesome approach to growing a startup or tech company, so take a read of the latest State of Independent SaaS Report based on hundreds of non-venture track, revenue-generating SaaS companies. It has really great Bootstrapped benchmarks: growth rates, demographics, validation approaches, and more......and from Pierre de Wulf are 6 (wise) things I wish I knew before I bootstrapped my first SaaS startup.
8. VENTURE CAPITAL: The Ying of the #6 Yang above - While bootstrapping (I've been there) is a very noble approach, more often than not, some kind of Venture Capital is needed to help fund growth and development. In last year's KeyBanc SaaS report, only 14% of companies surveyed were Bootstrapped or Independent. This report also found that VC-backed businesses demonstrate better growth, but at the total expense of margin. Correlating these deal size categories to forecast growth highlights that the low end of town retained the best forecast for (25% growth). TL;DR - Growth rate really matters to VC's and you need to understand exactly why. This article, by Jason Calacanis, lays out why VC firms aren’t focused on slow/modest growth startups.
9. PRODUCT: This one is for all you product managers. Lenny Rachitsky has curated a list of templates and frameworks for Product Management (there are also a bunch of others in there too) - definitely a bookmark-able page! If you are a founder and acting Product Manager then this one is a better fit for you.
10. CASE STUDY: HubSpot's turn. - this is another SaaS company that has crossed $1b in ARR (and growing at about 30%!!). They have been around for 14 years but didn't really get started until about 2011. You can watch the $0 - IPO breakdown here too.

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POD OF THE WEEK: Adding onto #3 above, Profitwell run a pricing page teardown on Accounting software company, Xero

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Retention. Long-term retention is the foundation of sustainable product growth. Retention is viewed differently in different industries. Gaming companies have 1, 7, and 30-day retention rate metrics and Segment has a great guide on how to measure and improve customer retention
2. COLD CALLS: 2% of today’s cold calls actually result in meetings and 63% of sales professionals say it’s what they dislike most about their jobs. However - 78% of decision-makers have taken an appointment or attended an event as a result of a cold call - so how do you be the latter not the former? ZoomInfo has a download for you. Jason Bay also has some methods to optimize response rates and Gong has some additional recommendations on cold calling.
3. FEEDBACK: No-one likes to be told they are doing a poor job. Delivering this news can be pretty anxiety-ridden. But we all have to do it. Here are some great tips for delivering that news well and when it comes to management - I love some thought-provoking rules - so here are 6 counterintuitive ones from First Round Capital.
4. CAPITAL: In the current/post COVID tech world, it doesn’t have to always be about Venture Capital or equity (and dilution) when looking to finance. Revenue-based financing is quickly becoming a popular way for startups to raise funds without sacrificing equity, with the rise of significant services such as Lighter Capital and The 20-Minute Term Sheet in the past couple of years. Here is how it works and what these financiers care about. HINT: It’s ARR and growth. From the SaaS CFO here is the Founder’s Guide to Venture Debt with advantages vs disadvantages of Debt vs Equity.
5. FREEMIUM: It's a new year and a new Freemium posting. This is extensive, so definitely bookmark-able as it covers a lot of detail on how to make Freemium models work.
6. PREDICTABLE REVENUE: It's the #1 reason investors love SaaS. I may give Salesforce a hard time occasionally - but almost 20 years ago, they launched the methodology of Predictable Revenue - which then became a sales guide published way back in 2011 by Aaron Ross - Crib Notes PDF pf that book is downloadable here.
7. REVENUE MANAGEMENT: Tagging on to #6 above - revenue management is the system of setting prices and adjusting them based on supply and demand (thanks for the infographic Chargify). In SaaS, which is all about predictability, this is really important, with RevOps being a new category of practice within maturing SaaS companies. 
8. SECURITY: Back-of-the-napkin Math tells us that about 88% of all SaaS is now sitting on public-cloud. But building on a major cloud provider’s platform doesn’t make your products secure. This is a great video and transcript hosted by HeavyBit covering the core tenets of modern cloud infrastructure security.
9. SILICON CLOUD: Here is a concept for you - (as I predicted daaaaaays ago) Geography is becoming way less of a thing. In the current portfolio of Initialized Capital (who I actually am not quite sure why they call themselves "the honeybadgers of Venture") fewer than one-third of the companies are based in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley. In this survey, more than 40 percent of founders say that the best place to start a company will be in the cloud.
10. SEO: For many SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is some otherworldly voodoo - But discoverability trumps content marketing and needs to be an endless-part of any modern business strategy. So sign up to Notion's SEO MBA class and get learning! The resources linked are meant to be a comprehensive curriculum on everything you need to know about SEO for SaaS companies.

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POD OF THE WEEK: Complimenting #6 above - for some, the concept of ’salesperson’ is cringe - so listen to this podcast from Predictable Revenue that explores the idea of social selling and bringing back the human element of sales. 

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1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: LVR (Lead Velocity Rate): LVR is the lead growth rate of qualified leads per month. This metric provides a clear understanding of a businesses’ future revenue and growth. (see #2 below for why this important in 2021). Setting a goal to increase LVR by 25% for example will also enable you to equally increase revenue generated for your business. 
2. REVENUE: For many of you financial end-of-year is fast approaching (and for some, it's already passed) so, question: How Dynamic Is Your Revenue Plan this year? In 2021 rapid acceleration away from everything 2020 is the best response. A pre-Covid revenue strategy this year could stall or even reverse your growth aspirations, so it's time to pull operational techniques from other departments (ie your Dev squads Agile ways) to create a more dynamic revenue plan - take a good read of this article from SBI for hot tips on avoiding poor Sales-based strategic planning. It even comes with an (OK-ish) downloadable planning tool (which I took the liberty to snag and sacrifice my email address for you).
3. OPEN STARTUPS: I love this - it's absolutely one for your bookmarks so you can continually check in overtime (or even join the team). Most Startups are very secretive about their metrics but over the last 5 years Baremetrics has been chipping away at this industry norm to get SaaS companies to be more open about performance; Theorizing that radically transparency can actually be beneficial - it works for me to compare and contrast my own business performance.
4. COGNITIVE LOAD: This is a great one for your tech dictionary and one to always keep in front of mind when designing any kind of user experience. Cognitive Load is basically the mental effort required every time you experience a new app or visit a website. It's the process of learning the navigation, layout, pages, buttons, etc: Your brain has to learn how to use the site while keeping track of the reason you came there in the first place and may begin to slow down or even abandon the task at hand when it receives more information than it can handle. Take a read of this article on ways to design experiences to minimize cognitive loads. Super interesting!
5. MARGINS: Sammy Abdullah takes a look at publicly traded SaaS companies reporting in comparison to the SaaS-rule-of-thumb of spend: The 40/40/20 rule, (where 40% of spend should be on research and development, 40% on Sales and Marketing and 20% on Admin). The takeaway is that the rule looks, in reality, more of a 30/50/20 split. Yup - HALF of spend is on Sales and Marketing (unless you are Zoom, then it’s 73%!!!!).
6. EMAIL MARKETING: Fun facts: 46% of consumers prefer to communicate digitally and 78% expect prompt follow-up from sales reps. This is likely growing post-covid normal - so check this ebook from ZenDesk on how to optimize your email automation tools and then from Salesforce is actually a pretty darn helpful best-practices guide to all things email marketing related (focusing on getting your data ducks in a row) - PDF for your downloading pleasure.
7. FUTURE 50: Three years ago, Fortune Magazine teamed up with BCG to create the Future 50 to try and identify companies with the best long-term growth potential. It's a cool list as it's all mainly tech (Last year’s list produced a cumulative shareholder return of 71%) - explore away.
8. 2021: SaaSBrief has a great article this week on SaaS in 2021. Tech/SaaS companies have obviously really benefited from the Great dispersion to digital and remote life/work (with forecasts that by 2023, 65% of global GDP will be digitized) but the author notes that 2021 will usher in more competition. M&A activity and PLG directly attributed to these shifts.
9. CASE STUDY: Last week's Xero case study was a popular one - so I'm continuing the case-study theme this week with New Relic. I was one of their trial friends and family customers way back in their very early days (just over 10 years ago) when they had $0 and today they are now at a whopping $650 million ARR!!!!
10. SALES: Getting to the point where you may need to hire a head of Sales? Tomasz Tunguz has three questions to ask them and Jason Lemkin has a list of 48 Types of VP Sales to make sure you know which one is the right one to hire for your business.

POD OF THE WEEK: Sales based: 3 Secrets to Help You Sell Upmarket Faster.

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: THE ROSE METRIC: Starting 2021 off with Rose colored metrics. People are the most important (and expensive) metric for any company, especially SaaS (yes, I would argue more important than the software product). Revenue per FTE is one metric to measure when it comes to people efficiency, but a better one perhaps is the ROSE Metric, (Return on SaaS Employees). This metric highlights the tradeoffs between headcount, recurring revenue, and EBITDA growth of a SaaS company.
2. MVP CANVAS: OK - this is interesting (because visual frameworks are my jam). Y’all have heard of the Lean Canvas and the Business Model Canvas? Well check out this spin on applying the framework focused on designing and launching MVP’s (just don’t burn the Pizza)
3. TOP SAAS: Who are the fastest growing SaaS companies of 2020? This excel file shows the largest private SaaS companies ranked by revenue as of last month. There are over 40 SaaS companies with more than $2m in revenue that grew more than 200%
4. CX REPORT: All companies are under pressure, especially after 2020, to deliver optimal customer experiences (CX) and companies with a 'champion' mindset outperform their counterparts. Getting started it's difficult to know where to make investments that are likely to pay off so download and read this in-depth Report (78% of respondents said that customer-centric agility has increased in importance as a result of COVID-19).
5. UPSKILLING: If you have a new years resolution to learn something new, then take a look at this comprehensive list of 50 plus free awesome Certificates to earn in 2021 from Security to DevOps and Programming languages.
6. CHURN: In our current comic climate, crisis-driven product churn is a legitimate thing as many businesses are continuing with a more austere strategy. As I’ve mentioned quite often in the past acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining an existing one. Creating a culture of customer retention is one of the best things to do, especially during a pandemic. This article discusses ways to make that happen.
7. LEADERSHIP:  The SBI CEO Advisory Board has defined three top priorities for high growth CEOs going into the new year - all focusing on business fundamentals and being data-driven.
8. GROWTH MARKETING: If you're responsible for growth/marketing we've hit the motherlode this week!  Dan Siepen has put together a comprehensive list of resources and the lists are updated often, so make sure you bookmark this page.
9. PITCH: Getting a VC's attention in the initial pitch meeting is incredibly important - so here are  10 tips to help your pitch game from Fran Rotman presented in a 28-part Tweet-storm (and check these 16 rookie errors founder make pitching to VC’s from Jason Lemkin)
10. CASE STUDY: Xero! The accounting software company is approaching $1B in ARR so SaaStr takes a look at how they go there: Nailing a niche and an LTV of 81 months really helps! Markgrowth also has a great complimentary article on how Xero acquired 350k SaaS users in 2018.

POD OF THE WEEK: Sean Ellis: How to rapidly scale growth. Sean discusses when the right time for a startup to really focus on ‘growth’ is and also  how to create a culture of experimentation.

Lets light the Sage and smoke out 2020! It's the perfect opportunity this week for a top 10 predictions list for 2021. (for all that our interested the  2020 version is here - looks like I REALLY nailed trend #8.).

1. THE GREAT DISPERSION 1/3 (People): WFH Life is here to stay for many! Along with Zillow and others, Reddit announced this week that employees can work from wherever indefinitely with no salary changes. 2020 has taught most of us that we can be productive from anywhere - want proof? The Economist has some solid data for you.  But where will everyone end up?
2. THE GREAT DISPERSION 2/3 (Product): Products and services bypassed traditional channels like stores, movie theaters (remember them?), and gyms in favor of faster, interaction-free shipments and deliveries. In 2021 the experience that will matter most to customers will be decentralized and mostly a digital only experience - this is the 2021 and onwards new normal. Shopify have this outstanding report covering the future of these eCommerce, retail, and fulfillment trends - a must read.
3. THE GREAT DISPERSION 3/3 (Capital): You can raise Millions from VC's over Zoom and they will care much less  about your business being  based in SF anymore. It's pretty big news and could really decentralize and make access to Capital much more equitable.  Pro-tip read here on how you will be Zoom-judged by the VC's you are pitching to.
4. FOCUS: Many buying decisions were delayed, reduced, or canceled in 2020 - so do you have a plan that will focus your 2021 efforts to grow faster than your competition? SBI have a great focused 4-step process for you to review for 2021.
5. RETENTION: An unintended consequence of the Great Dispersion combined with hopefully a great global economic recovery is that competition for distributed services and products (like SaaS and eCommerce) will explode. Recent research by Salesforce shows that 80% of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or service. Retention of those customers will be running hot and companies will be experimenting like crazy to optimize those uncertain retention challenges
6. PUBLIC CLOUD: An obvious conclusion from all this forecasted digital growth/WFH will be the corollary growth of Cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The Cloud will be central to post-pandemic new normals. The cloud market grew even faster in 2020 than in 2019, even during the steepest economic contraction in modern history and Gartner is forecasting global public cloud revenue to grow by 19% by 2021.
7. DEMOCRATIZATION OF INNOVATION: I've discussed this in the past under the "No-Code" title. Enterprise departments and divisions are frustrated at the speed their organizations' IT department can deliver digital projects. Welcome to the world of no-code. Technology infrastructure is becoming so commoditized and abstracted that we have now reached a point in time where web services, apps, and integrations can be provisioned visually with zero amounts of code written by departments outside of IT. A great example is the new e-commerce site, Webflow, who is competing against Shopify, BigCommerce and the like and requires no developers/engineers to stand up and manage a web store.
8. CRYPTO-SPRING: The Crypto-winter is over - so this is a bit of a cheat as Bitcoin is on a burn right now along with a lot of other cryptocurrencies (just don't tell Ripple). But investors have traded out of gold as bitcoin has gone on its recent run - it's all still not mainstream as a currency though (more of an asset) , so De-Fi is the sub-set of Crypto outside of Bitcoin's rally to keep an eye on.
9. CHATBOTS: I wanted to mention Product Led Growth - as 2021 will require more reliance on using the product as the main vehicle to acquire, activate, and retain customers. but as I have ranted quite extensively about it in the past, it's not exactly a new trend for 2021. But PLG 2.0 via Chatbots 2.0 works as a trend! Intelligent Self Service support is key to PLG.
10. INTELLIGENCE: aka Data. I can't skip this one. (it was this or 5G). Check this list of 5 trends from Google Cloud. Gartner believe so deeply that data and analytics programs will become even more mission-critical that they created 100 data and analytics predictions through 2021.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! It's the last newsletter of this insane year and the perfect opportunity for a retrospective on the most clicked links (by you!) for the year. 2020 hindsight has quite a different meaning these days. . Thanks for your readership and see ya next year.

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE YEAR - 1 of 2: Product-Market-Fit. Wait it’s a metric? According to Jeff Chang - you betcha: The best metric for determining quantitative product market fit; SaaS METRIC OF THE YEAR - 2 of 2: All of it! ChartMogul have compiled their (“ultimate") SaaS Metrics Cheat Sheet 
2. GO TO MARKET METRICS: Current and pragmatic Go-To-Market benchmarks are presented in this deck from Tomasz Tunguz and the team at Redpoint Ventures. Some good findings from their survey: 1) If SDR/BDR teams hit their numbers, so do Account Executives; 2) Most sales teams ramp Account Executives in about six months; 3) Marketing teams spend 5-10% of a companies ARR.
3. BURNOUT: Anecdotally I feel like I have had more conversations about burnout in this year than ever. I’m glad people are talking about it, but it’s also very much a sign of the times. Check this very personal article from the CEO of Subbly on how he he recognized and managed his own burnout. Great lessons in here for everyone.
4. REMOTE: Nearly all of us are working remotely or WFH. The big tech players in Silicon Valley (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc) are all doing it too and not really looking back too much. So take read of this article from Inc. Magazine (and rip it off): 9 great tips from Googles Remote Work Policy. Ars Technica expand beyond policy and dive into both technical and cultural changes in this article.
5. MARKETING: A SaaS 101 primer.  From the team at SaaStock is 1) a 20-page PDF guide to SaaS Marketing and 2) pulled from their last (non-virtual) conference are 4 of their top marketing Sessions.
6. PITCH DECKS: The self-proclaimed Worlds Largest Pitch Deck creation! Why recreate the pitch-wheel? Alexander Jarvis has compiled a monster collection (139) of funded pitch decks here (including AirBnB, LinkedIn, Intercom, Transferwise, Canva, and Sendgrid).
7. CHURN: This is real simple (but cringey-because-we-can-relate) list of things to do in order for your customers to hate you.
8. CAPITAL: Jason Lemkin lists 11 signs a VC can use to to predict if a venture investment will work out and 10 further hacks to have happier investors.
9. SALES: A great primer on SaaS Sales from our friends at Lighter Capital. Sales cycles, commission rates, models, and metrics all explained (with best practices).
10. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Customer loyalty drives the success of a business, and the customer experience (CX) drives loyalty. Zen Desk has published their CX Trends Report for 2020 and it's full of great nuggets: 74% of customers feel loyal to a particular brand or company and 52% of customers report going out of their way to buy from their favorite brands.

POD OF THE YEAR: Trello (now part of Atlassian) is well beyond 50,000,000 users. Check this vid-cast from Jason Lemkin and SaaStr on the founders top learnings on getting there.

We're going to make this weeks newsletter a customer-focused edition:

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: LTV/CAC. The ratio of a customer lifetime value (LTV) versus costs associated to acquire that customer (CAC) is one of the primary metrics that companies use to measure efficiency. Many think the higher the better - but 3 is actually the magic number, if it's higher, you are more than likely leaving customer money on the table - but this article is interesting as it gives 4 reasons (from an advertising lens) as to why LTV/CAC is not a great metric for early startups (and what to use instead). HINT: It’s totally payback period…...
2. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Customer loyalty drives the success of a business, and the customer experience (CX) drives loyalty. Zen Desk has published their CX Trends Report for 2020 and it's full of great nuggets: 74% of customers feel loyal to a particular brand or company and 52% of customers report going out of their way to buy from their favorite brands.
3. CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS:   When it comes to trust, people trust people over brands. Chart Mogul has posted an 'Ultimate' Guide to Using Customer Testimonials to Boost Sales, noting that a generic and insincere endorsement is just as helpful as not using anything. It's also possible to take it a step further  by leveraging those frothiest of customers into a referral channel. Here is a playbook from SaaStr on how to make that happen.
4. CUSTOMER CASE STUDIES: Latching onto #3 above, beyond testimonials, case studies are super valuable at early-stages as a company needs to demonstrate to the market not just their credibility but both the business value and the technical context of the product. Heavy Bit has a great guide on how to craft that first customer case study and Uplift provides 6 best practices to be using in your story.
5. CUSTOMER SERVICE:  In this current age of the customer, enhanced by COVID,  SaaSx makesthe argument that Customer Success is actually the product. Want to start building out that product? Check the HubSpot guide on getting started with your customer team.
6. CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION: In order to calculate the cost for Customer Service Managers, it’s best to segment customers out in order to understand the efforts required. Chartmogul has this great visual and once again Gainsight take a look at how to Benchmark efforts over segmentation. Here is what they found. The median amount of ARR that an Enterprise CSM can manage is between $2M and $5M and The median amount of customers an Enterprise CSM manages is 10-50 - these revenue figures drop with mid and SMB customer segments and increase fairly dramatically with number of customers per CSM.
7. CUSTOMER PERSONAS: SaaS B2B Marketing is a pretty unique beast - and getting into the minds of an idealized customer often requires going through the practice of creating personas - you should try it - it will def make you a better SaaS marketer. For most SaaS companies creating multiple personas is often a strategic necessity. So here is an additional differentiator (and what the difference is compared to a persona) of an Ideal customer profile.
8. CUSTOMER DATA: Customer data management is a practice, not a technology. I love that simple message. Bluconic give the crib notes/5-steps in this article about how to develop a strategy to optimize and improve customer experience using good data management practices.
9. CUSTOMER ONBOARDING: Onboarding success is often de-prioritized with scrappy fast-growing business but giving customers all the tools they need to succeed with your product is the best way to ensure that they stick around. Profitwell review the importance of good SaaS onboarding and discuss steps to create an awesome program. Userpilot also have a great tactical complimentary post here on the best customer onboarding software options for SaaS companies.
10. CUSTOMER DELIGHT AUDIT. Its the Age of the Customer you know, so this needs to  be a thing - here is an in-depth post from CopyHackers on how to make this kind of Audit happen and here is a case study on how 3 big Tech companies (GitLab, HubSpot and Zoom) make delight happen. Also here is a Case Study on building a customer centric B2B organization from McKinsey.

POD OF THE WEEK: WFH life for Customer Success teams - the CEO of ChurnZero has a perspective on how to build this function remotely ​

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: EARLY STAGE BENCHMARKS - Metrics are only good if you know what to benchmark yourself against and Chartio has a list of 20 benchmarks for Growing Startups all handily broken down by department (such as Sales, Marketing, Product, Revenue).
2. GROWTH: A strong follow from above - I hear this complaint a lot, and it seems to be (anecdotally) increasing: Companies are expected by investors/shareholders to measure the right things at the wrong stage. The SaaS world is such a metric-heavy industry - we want to measure the things we want to improve. So here is advice for everyone (especially early-stage investors): Don’t focus on metrics like MRR too early on (but qualified leads - for sure!). And here is how to measure product-market fit.
3. QUOTA 1/2: Hands up if you're forecasting or re-forecasting for 2021! Compensating SaaS Sales Reps is complicated and expensive. This blog post from Kyle Racki of Proposify has a pretty comprehensive guide from how to set quotas and commissions. But here is a quick shortcut to make it easy for all you Account Executives: The average annual quota in this report from David Skok and Co was found to be $770K in ACV and on average, the quota was found to be 5.3X OTE. An expanded top10inTech teardown of that report (which admittedly is from 2017 so starting to get a bit long in the tooth) can be found here.
4. FORECASTS: Outside of setting quotas, running a SaaS business has a primary reliance on cashflow - so it is imperative to forecast future revenue to avoid a cash crunch when trying to scale. So check this article covering Sales Forecasts and Pipeline Reviews: Why and How from a cash perspective
5. SALES ENABLEMENT: Now that quotas are sorted thanks to #3 and #4 above: What are the best practices for optimizing performance with revenue teams? Sales Hacker have their 5 Do’s and Don’ts for peak results as well as an infographic (BTW 61% of organizations have a dedicated sales enablement person).
6. SDR RAMP: According to past studies, time to ramp for an SDR averages about 3.2 months. From Saleshacker here are some tips and tricks to make this ramp time as effective and successful as possible.
7. QUOTA 2/2: Thought provoking article from #3, #4 and #5 above. Your Sales Team has a Sales Quota. Your Marketing team has to have a quota too. as they are also part of your revenue team. Getting both sales and marketing teams aligned beyond quota though is a real trick and Tomasz Tunguz has a quick diagnostic to determine if your sales and marketing teams are working well together.
8. SPEED: First Round Capital always a take on speed. This is because top tech companies are top performers and market differentiators in-part due to the fact that they operate at a cadence that is faster than most. It’s all about execution and heartbeat, which requires a fierce focus and prioritization. 
9. SECURITY: There is an ever-increasing value seen in good security practices when investors evaluate startups. Especially when evaluating mid-market and (especially) enterprise targeted tech. Here are a couple of great articles from HeavyBit discussing this in detail - from what investors are looking for in a team's response to security to how to pass those awkward, sales-friction-inducing, Enterprise Security Reviews….and also how to get started.
10. MOBILE: AppAnnie has compiled 5 key (data informed) post-COVID trends you need to know about mobile for 2021: TikTok is forecast 1.2 BILLION (yes billion)MAU for next year. Thats bonkers! Also "Couch commerce" is the new phrase I cant get enough of now that being more at home is the new normal.

POD OF THE WEEK: Reid Hoffman pretty much talks about everything in this podcast (he already talks at 1.5 speed, so keep the speed settings at normal on your Pod App): Starting LinkedIn, investing in Airbnb, passing on Stripe, the different styles of Leaders, how to think through price in Venture, the power of a learning mindsets, etc, etc...

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: NRG - Natural Rate of Growth. This is for all you Product Lead Growth groupies. With NRG the assumption is that a PLG business has an organic, self-service, growth engine at the core (because they’re built to attract the end-user). The article linked above comes complete with benchmarks towards the end. Hungry for more PLG metrics? I got ya!
2. PRODUCT LED GROWTH (PLG): Nice little lead-in from above, Lemme tech-splain you: PLG is a go-to-market strategy that relies on using the product as the main vehicle for growth (eg Slack, Evernote, Netflix, and Dropbox). PLG gives the user access to the product, driving their experience to meaningful outcome where upgrading to a paid plan just  becomes a no-brainer. It can become a true growth fly-wheel if built right.
3. TRIALS: Are a proven method for a solid PLG  go-to-market strategy. Check this article on 9 ways to optimize your SaaS trial and then take note from Tomasz Tunguz on how long should your customer trial period be?: TL;DR: Longer trials do not convert customers at greater rates
4. CUSTOMER SUCCESS: Take a (deep) read of this extensive guide for building great customer success teams - CS is not just about limiting churn, but it also creates a department and practice to convince existing customers to buy even more from you. As Jason Lemkin said back in 2015: "Customer Success is where 90% of the revenue is”. Want a working example? Chart Mogul expand on this and explain their approach to a (successful) success management strategy.
5. MARKETING SPEND: Last week I mentioned Sales Budgets - Figuring out how to optimize marketing spend and growth rate is also a key question and this study doesn’t show great benchmarks - percentage of revenue in pretty much equals percentage growth out, but with an ever increasing range of outcomes as spend increases per business. More solid benchmarks are with the Sales vs Marketing spend ratios which stay at about 2:1 regardless of market-facing strategies (although Mixed is a bit of an outlier).
6. PROSPECTING: A lot of startups follow this path: Get an idea, build an MVP, convince friends and family to validate as beta customers. Then........OK - now what? This is ideally when prospecting needs to start - so take a read here of  the beginner’s guide to B2B prospecting.
7. GROWTH (Bootstrapped): I love myself a good and fully transparent, with warts and all, SaaS growth story. So this one is a great beginning to end account: Growing a SaaS from Zero To Sold - BOOTSTRAPPED. On the flip side of that bootstrap world are the unavoidable and hard pitfalls of trying to grow a startup without any external capital: 6 things I wish I knew before I bootstrapped my first SaaS startup.
8. CAPITAL: Good conversations this week prompted me to make sure to add some significant messages this newsletter focused on the Venture World. First up - seed stage start-ups do not have the pipeline, processes, or sales skills capability to give hard core growth metrics to an investor. So what metrics actually matter? This article from The Startup lists 3 metrics that should truly matter to investors at Series A. Second is the SaaS napkin: Point Nine Capital have just launched a call for feedback to update their SaaS Napkin for 2020 (it’s awesome but a little pre-covid) so here is the fresh publication from them on what it takes to raise capital (in SaaS) in 2020.
9. PITCH: The days of  mandatory in-person pitch meeting to a VC are mostly behind us (at least for the foreseeable future). Pitching over Zoom is where we are at. Before you focus on getting the perfect lighting though - check these 16 rookie errors founder make pitching to VC’s from Jason Lemkin and read here on how you will be Zoom-judged by the VC's you are pitching to.
10. FINANCE: Founders - take a good review of this! How many of these mistakes are you making? (i'm making a few) : 8 Finance Mistakes Growing SaaS Businesses Make (and How to Fix Them).

POD OF THE WEEK: Continuing the Bootstrapped theme from #7: Bootstrapping To $640k MRR With Omar Zenhom of WebinarNinja

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Share of Wallet. This is a fun one for all you marketplace people (who should also check this other article on Marketplace Liquidity).Share of Wallet is a measure of a marketplace going from being one of many options to becoming the main option. for a buyer (AND also a supplier).
2. MARKETING: Guess what? Your marketing team is slow!. Take a read of this article on frameworks to make your marketers speed up. Tech companies are market differentiators in-part due to the fact that they operate at a cadence that is faster than most. Speed is a competitive advantage that your marketing teams need to leverage!
3. SECURITY: Even ignoring everything else that has made this year bonkers,  2020 has also been an absolute doozy of a year for cyber attacks and breaches. here are some stats: 60% increase in the average ransomware payment from Q1-Q2 2020, Web App attacks are up 800% from last year, and Coronavirus alone  is blamed for a 238% rise in cyber attacks on banks. So first steps - protect your perimeter, especially if you are running WordPress.
4. PRICING: The debates are always passionate when discussing the merits of expose the pricing of a SaaS product via a public facing page. But regardless of what side of that argument you want to sit on, a simple truth remains: The pricing model of your product serves as the entry point for your customers. Public or not. Chartmogul reviewed 600+ publicly facing SaaS pricing pages and analyzed them to learn how subscription software companies price, package, and position their products - its a great read.  and Alexandre Dewez has done something similar with benchmarking the pricing model of 100+ subscription based mobile apps.
5. TECHNOGRAPHIC: Add this doozy of a Portmanteau to your dictionaries and spell checker - you should also read that article too as I don't know about you, but the number of tech vendors we use to run our tech business stresses me out, with services flopping in and out all the time! Which leads nicely into this article: How Many Technologies Can a Company Adopt at Once?  Answer - there is always one more (JK, but not really).
6. SALES: Budgeting for growth - we could spend a whole newsletter on that topic, but lets not. But how much sales budget should there be? Zoominfo have some answers for ya! Bad news - spend is on the rise.
7. GROWTH MARKETING: For all of you who appreciated last weeks Great guide to Growth Marketing Success I have an update from the same author:  15 Growth Marketing Tactics to Turbocharge Your Startup.
8. TRAFFIC:  An Indie Hacker short double-article whammy on web-traffic : a) How to boost traffic to your boring-ass SaaS product  (basically create some FREE exciting/useful tools related in some way and share them around) and b) How to rank higher in those pesky product based search results (pro-tip - use Reddit!! Genius)
9. MOATS: Moats are one of the best ways to provide a competitive advantage for your business and can moats come in all kinds of different flavors (such as speed, Brand, or growth). This post lists some other popular and effective ways for B2B SaaS companies to create such moats for their products.
10. UNICORNS: At the end of 2013, there were just 43 $1Billion plus valued unicorns, by October 2015 there were 141. Last week it hit the 500 mark for the first time. Full Excel sheet here from CBInsights

POD OF THE WEEK: Startup US Legal Basics in the US (and what kid of entity to form)  from the team at Wilson Sonsini, one of the premier legal forms for US startups. 

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: LTV This metric represents the average revenue that a customer generates before they churn. ChartMogul have a great online calculator here. Go advanced mode as this calculator references the traditional formula as well as the David Skok version (which is the advanced one, but viewed as being more realistic)....and check here for a thought provoking read of why your LTV may be lower than you think.
2. CODE: Hard truth - some of your code stinks. Take a read of this for the kind of bad smells your repo may have.  Meh - but how much does it matter? Well here is a report that gives you that cold-hard number . In this report Stripe also calculates the developer "community" to be valued at about $3 trillion GDP globally.
3. DELIGHT AUDIT. Its the Age of the Customer you know, so this should be a thing - enough with the  eye rolling! This is an in-depth post from CopyHackers on how to make this kind of Audit happen and here is a case study on how 3 big Tech companies (GitLab, HubSpot and Zoom) make delight happen. Also here is a Case Study on building a customer centric B2B organization from McKinsey
4. WRITING: Being able to write well is a skill that needs to sit with founders. So here is 3 step guide - Step 1. How to position your startup and achieve your unique value prop; Step 2. how to write well and one more version for good measure; and Step 3 top tips for telling stories.
5. GROWTH MARKETING: For all those who have mastered step 4 above, here is a great guide to Growth Marketing Success - as the author points out, Growth "hacking" is not a series of "hacks." It's a rigorous methodology consisting of experimenting, collecting data, and leveraging human psychology.
6. MONEY: Just because cash is key to eeevvverrrything right now. Take some time to review some fundamentals on cash management (in 2020)  - it's a printable PDF from PitchBook! and understanding SaaS P&L statements.
7. MANAGEMENT: Thinking of moving from engineering to management? Awesome! But guess what, the rules have kind of changed in 2020 and you probably wont code anymore - but it's still a technical job.
8. SALES ANALYSIS: Every company wants to boost your sales and close more deals right? So take a read and a bookmark to this article as it is a really deep dive into comprehensive Sales Analysis - listing 4 different analysis types and then providing  9 tips on how to use this quality sales sales analysis data to generate more revenue.
9. DECIDE: Because human beings are weird we often make decisions using  predictable (and fairly subconscious) mental shortcuts  - in the UX world, the term used is 'Heuristics'.  Check this (ultimate) guide to heuristics evaluation, complete with cast studies!
10. RULE OF 40: What is the 40% rule for SaaS companies? This video explains more but basically when a VC backed SaaS businesses (of over ~ $2m ARR) adds profit + growth rate, the total should be equal to 40% (or more). This helps calculate the cadence of a business: The faster they grow, the less profitable they need to be. Rule of 40 stocks have outperformed the broader indices and IT benchmarks over the last 15 years.

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POD OF THE WEEK: Trello (now part of Atlassian) is well beyond 50,000,000 users. Check this vid-cast from Jason Lemkin and SaaStr on the fo

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: EXPANSION: A lot of SaaS companies are fixated on customer acquisition, leaving customer expansion as an underrated growth strategy that SaaS companies often gloss over. Hard facts: Every dollar of new customer revenue in 2020 costs $1.60  - expansion is the growth bargain - with each dollar of expansion revenue costing $0.69. Using the analogy of Ice Cream (you had my attention right there) this article goes in-depth to identify and separate out three differing kinds of expansion along with five strategies you can deploy.
2. DATA: I don’t think I have more to add than the title of this article: "You Cannot Be Data-Driven Without Experimentation” but the opposite of that is also a truth to hammer home "You Cannot run experiments successfully without being data-driven”. We all overestimate our experimentation skills AND our Data collection skills.
3. MARKETING: I like the fact that the authors of this article didn't use the words "ultimate" or "top" in their B2B SaaS Marketing Guide - 2020 edition. It's a collection of learnings for founders and b2b marketers who are looking to build their b2b marketing programs - very much a book-markable link.
4. FORWARD MULTIPLES: This is a preferred metric used to value SaaS companies, who generally carry very few assets, little to no profitability, but all kinds of potential. That number is wildly variable and often bonkers - as of June 2020, the median SaaS valuation multiple for public companies stands at 11.4x ARR. So how is that number calculated? The answer?.....it depends: But a companies revenue growth and sales efficiency dominate the model. Cash flow margins, net income margins (profitability), gross margins, and many other metrics are largely irrelevant.
5. SALES: Deal mechanics! How can Account Executives who are getting the same amount of meetings booked by SDRs out-perform their counterparts? According to this article - best-practice deal mechanics. It's about what also happens between meetings, using video, phone, and LinkedIn to engage all the decision-makers involved in complex enterprise deals, giving your prospects an out, and setting next steps. Jason Lemkin also swoops in this week with some top tips on tips to help sales execs close more.
6. NO CODE: Codeless apps have been here for a while! Technology infrastructure has become so commoditized and abstracted that we have now reached a point in time where web services, apps, and integrations can be provisioned visually with zero amounts of line-based code written. AWS has legitimized this practice into the main-stream via Amazon Honeycode, a tool that makes it possible to build web and mobile applications without coding and this article goes into depth outlining the current squad of no-code players, tools, and haters.
7. CI/CD: Continuous improvement (CI) is not just a process that dev teams use to iterate and ship software quickly, the process identifies opportunities to reduce waste and streamline work within any department or team. CI can easily be confused with Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery - but they are not the same. This article from Angel.co helps clarify the differences and makes the case why CI is the optimal dev strategy for delivering great customer experiences.
8. PRODUCT: Product Management - what exactly is it? This article highlights what it is and also what it isn't (in comparison to the role of a project manager) as does this one and this article highlights a more subtle difference - one between Product Managers and  Product Owners. Unfortunately for professional growth, in-person conferences for all you Product Managers out there is on hold for the foreseeable future so here are some thought-provoking presentations for product managers from years past.
9. TEST TEST TEST: Evaluating the functionality of a software application at every stage is critical to shipping something awesome.  Take a good read of this PDF guide (along with real-life examples) and then bookmark this Google Site (blast from the past) page for a comprehensive list of the Stages of Test Development.  Thats list is kind of old school though - so take a read and sprinkle some of  this more modern (ie Agile) take on testing. into your QA world.
10. LINK BUILDING: This kind of seems like an SEO tactic of the past, where businesses build links to create a more organically positive Search rating. So is it still a relevant practice in 2020? Well......yah! But the rules have changed quite a lot. Check this article on how to optimize (by careful curation and intent) what to link.

POD OF THE WEEK:  A continuation from #5 above:  Deal Mechanics: How to Work (And Close) 3x The Deals with Nick Cegelski

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: MRR: Subscription revenue is powerful. It accumulates and compounds over time and MRR, or Monthly Recurring Revenue, is a predictable (..get it?) SaaS Metric Classic - so this is a deep dive article into everything you ever wanted to know (and much, much more) about this most common of metrics, covering different MRR types, differences between MRR and ARR, etc, etc, etc.
2. MRR LEVERS: OK -so what are the best ways that SaaS companies can grow their MRR? Check this article that looks at two (of the five) elements of MRR growth that often fly under the radar of acquisition (expansion and reactivation).
3. CAPITAL: If you are looking to raise capital - You have 2-4 slides tops to grab the attention of an investor. Use those slides wisely and don’t go beyond 12-15. But also check this word of warning from Elizabeth Yin (Co-founder / GP at hustle fund): NOW is really a horrible time to be raising, only fundraise now if you are wrapping up a raise or really need a little bit of money.
4. FUTURE FOUNDERS: Looking to start something soon? Y Combinator is launching a new Startup School intended for the Founders of the future. The course will start next week - November 9th and run for 6 weeks. Spread the word or Sign up here!
5. PERSONAS: SaaS B2B Marketing is a pretty unique beast - and getting into the minds of an idealized customer often requires going through the practice of creating personas - you should try it - it will def make you a better SaaS marketer. For most SaaS companies creating multiple personas is often a strategic necessity. So here is an additional differentiator (and what the difference is compared to a persona) of an Ideal customer profile.
6. MARKETING: Add this one to your SaaS dictionary: Buyer Intent Data. I have posted all kinds of articles in this newsletter on Marketing strategies and tactics - but there is never a one-size fits all channel for a company. So how does a business find out what are the best marketing channels for them? This article suggests that everything needed to answer that questions is already within the data a business generates every day. (you're gonna need Personas - so don't skip #5)
7. CUSTOMER DATA: Looping together 5 and 6 above  - Customer data management is a practice, not a technology. I love that simple message. Bluconic give the crib notes/5-steps in this article about how to develop a strategy to optimize and improve customer experience using good data management practices.
8. USABILITY TESTING: Creating an intuitive application or website takes time, and requires a process of design - what may seem obvious to one person may not be for everyone.  It's not just about UX - it's about usability testing, read here for the fundamentals on this concept. Once you have that article mastered, head over here on how to elevate your UX design empathy skills.
9. WORK-LIFE 💩: I don't know about you - I think WFH is great but it also makes work-life integration just straight up weird and the boundaries a little tricky to manage. 4 year olds do not respect Zoom rooms. So I did lean into this article and feel we are all in here somewhere - to reel you in: "Remote isn’t just a different way of working, it’s a different way of living. And if you’re not careful, the only thing you’ll experience is work" . The author recognizes 4 different types of work-life boundary management to help you manage your own boundaries: Integrators, Cyclers, Separators and Role-Firsters.
10. FRAMEWORKS: Beyond metrics, a successful framework can distills complex processes or models to make execution more of a simple recipe. Kinda why OKR's exist. Sarah Tavel has compiled a great list of compelling Frameworks covering the 10x model, the hierarchy of engagement, hype cycles and more!

POD OF THE WEEK: A new podcast from First Round Review - In Depth - focused on good advice startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. First episode is with Molly Graham discussing team management who helped build and scale Facebook, Quip, and is now the COO of Lambda School.

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Net Dollar Retention - Sammy Abdullah of Blossom Street Ventures backs up my on-going opinion that net dollar retention (and by-proxy Up-sell) is the most important metric in SaaS. NDR comes in a variety of different efforts though so take a read of this article to get a better grip of the nuance and then ask yourself: "Does my startup need to increase customer acquisition/marketing spend?" Tomasz Tunguz writes in detail about this and Crunchbase do the work to calculate what good NDR benchmarks should look like. 
2. CUSTOMER SERVICE:  In this current age of the customer, enhanced by COVID,  SaaSx make the argument that Customer Success is actually the product. Want to start building out that product? Check the HubSpot guide on getting started with your customer team.
3. HANDOFF: To add onto above, the customer journey will have plenty of touch points and handoffs. Chartmogul provide some great tips on customer handoff from sales to Customer Success teams.
4. NPS: To add onto the add on above. Customer Service and Success have many metrics to track and NPS makes the top of the list. This White Paper from Ask Nicely reviews NPS (among with other common customer experience metrics) and explains how to measure and calculate NPS. Neil Patel then gets into a 3 step program of how to leverage NPS for your business.
5. ANALYTICS: Being a "growth hacker" is just putting a shiny label on high fidelity analytics mastery but many analytics efforts result in failure - it’s all about the data, not the tools, check this primer on the topic. McKinsey provide five pointers on how to make analytics work in B2B Sales. And once you get good at collecting the cold hard data, check the following article on how to perform a sales analysis (step by step).
6. PERSONALIZATION: Did you know that personalization can reduce acquisition costs as much as 50% and 87% of companies see a lift in key growth metrics when they employ personalization? SaaS marketers have been leveraging personalization to increase conversion rates, improve customer success, and increase the quality of sales/marketing funnels for some time so here is a great article from Chart Mogul on the (modern day) personalization fundamentals.
7. PRIVACY: The Debbie downer from above, let's not get too personal. Privacy concerns are rightfully growing and rules around the globe are tightening (FYI the California Consumer Privacy Act goes into effect in 2020). This is creating significant challenges in the digital advertising industry, so Google has created a playbook, collecting best practices and case studies from this forward-thinking, privacy optimized,  group of marketers. 
8. FIRST PRINCIPLE THINKING : Want to be more like Elon? Take a read here on the concept of  First Principles Thinking. Not gonna lie, I've re-read it again this week and it still makes my brain hurt. Want more? Fine. Here is a full guide/website. Now that you are an expert on this principle, here is how First Principle Thinking can be applied IRL - in this example towards a Product Lead Growth business.
9. ROADMAPS: Always seem a bit too waterfall-y for Agile teams -  old-school, clunky and rigid. But Agile teams absolutely need them as the teams still need some overarching direction and sense of what’s to come beyond Sprint cycles. Read here on the reasoning why along with 5 roadmap templates to use. I'm personally a fan of  how Atlassian have designed their public access roadmap - it gives me hope.
10. DEATH: Of the SaaS kind. Y-Combinator (via the SaaStr Blog) lists 5 things that kill startups (and what to do about it). It's a way deeper article than it sounds (and it ain't just 5 things)

BONUS: There is no real category for this post, but I think it's awesome. Entitled 'A Few Rules'

POD OF THE WEEK: Expanding on #5 above, just having data is not enough: it takes an entire system of tools and technology to extract value from data. a16z explore the evolution of data architectures.