# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 12, 2026

Published: 12 June 2026
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/top-10-in-tech-what-to-know-for-week-ending-june-12-2026

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK

ARR alone doesn't tell you what kind of growth you're getting. [Check this article (and dashboard)](https://www.thevccorner.com/p/saas-metrics-dashboard-for-founders) breaks MRR into New, Expansion, Contraction, Churned, Net New, and Ending. A company growing through expansion behaves very differently from one that depends entirely on new logos. Only the Excel bit is paywalled. The diagnostic logic: if trials are stable but activation drops, fix onboarding. If activation is good but the paid conversion flat, the value moment is unclear. If the active base grows faster than acquisition, retention is doing the work.

Link: https://www.thevccorner.com/p/saas-metrics-dashboard-for-founders

## 2. JOBS 1/2

Pragmatic Engineer has a two-part [State of the Software Engineering Job Market 2026](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-the-job-market-2026) ( [here for part 2](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-job-market-in-2026-part-2)). It's way less doom and gloom than we assume (see below for more). Meta grew software engineering 20% over two years, then [laid off 10%](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/5/20/meta-cuts-8000-jobs-in-sweeping-global-layoffs) last week. Apple up 10%, Google up 5%, Microsoft and Amazon flat. But Scaleups grew faster: Ramp +94%, Wiz +84%, Datadog +68%, Rippling +55%. AI engineering roles are way up - 50-100% YoY at large tech firms.

Link: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-the-job-market-2026

## 3. JOBS 2/2

[Benedict Evans following up on the doom and gloom bit above](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/5/24/ai-job-exposure) on why AI job-exposure analyses don't work. The test case: 50 years of financial automation (VisiCalc to ERP to cloud). If you'd done a "professions exposed to automation" chart anytime since the 70s, Accountants would have been at the top. Instead, the accountant headcount kept going up. Just look at the Big 4.

Link: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/5/24/ai-job-exposure

## 4. MARKETS

Is the SaaSpocalypse over? [Infrastructure and consumption businesses are still looking to get a premium](https://www.saastr.com/the-saaspocalypse-is-officially-over-public-software-is-back-to-green-at-the-index-level/) (DigitalOcean grew at 227%, Datadog 76%, CrowdStrike 55%). Seat-based application software, an AI agent could replace gets discounted, even when the numbers are fine (Klaviyo down 52%, Monday down 45%, Atlassian down 36%).

Link: https://www.saastr.com/the-saaspocalypse-is-officially-over-public-software-is-back-to-green-at-the-index-level/

## 5. VALUATIONS

Great quote "[If you can articulate what would change your mind, you have a hypothesis. If you can't, you have a story you're protecting](https://www.thevccorner.com/p/stop-asking-what-your-startup-is-worth)." The difference between a $5M and $15M valuation often comes down to whether the founder can draw a straight line between what they believe and what they're testing.

Link: https://www.thevccorner.com/p/stop-asking-what-your-startup-is-worth

## 6. CASH

And shit loads of it - how are we all not screwed? Google generates $174B in annual cash flow - literally the best business model on earth - and it's not enough for that hungry hungry AI. They're spending more this year on AI infrastructure than the world's best cash machine can produce - their solution - [an $80B equity raise (the largest ever](https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/google-is-raising-80-billion-and-you-re-bearish)), $100B+ in total debt up from $25B a year ago, a 100-year bond at 6.125% (matures 2126) - WTF. [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/news/confidential-draft-s1-sec) and [SpaceX](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/spacex-google-compute-deal-raises-eyebrows-ahead-of-ipo-120522033.html) (now an AI company) and [OpenAI ](https://openai.com/index/openai-submits-confidential-s-1/)are all listing REAL soon - so much cash about to be thrown around.

Link: https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/google-is-raising-80-billion-and-you-re-bearish

## 7. QUOTA

Interesting idea - Your VP Sales (hopefully) has a quota. Your VP Marketing probably needs one too. Check Jason Lemkin's [classic 3-question hiring filter](https://www.saastr.com/your-vp-sales-has-a-sales-quota-your-vp-marketing-needs-a-lead-quota-period): 1) What was your lead/opportunity commit at your last company, and how was it determined? 2) I want to hit $Xm ARR by year-end - what do we do in the first 90 days? 3) How should sales and marketing work together to hit it? If they fumble on this, they prob never owned a number.

Link: https://www.saastr.com/your-vp-sales-has-a-sales-quota-your-vp-marketing-needs-a-lead-quota-period

## 8. GROWTH

Another Lemkin's post: As discussed in [prior weeks'](https://www.top10in.tech/top-10-in-tech/top-10-in-tech-what-to-know-for-week-ending-march-13-2026) posts (see #9 on Productivity), [AI broke the link between revenue and headcount](https://www.saastr.com/it-took-apple-42-years-to-reach-1-trillion-anthropic-will-do-it-in-5). When Google crossed $30B in revenue, it had 32,000 people. When Salesforce did, it had 79,000. Anthropic crossed it with 5,000. And the Time-to-$1T is even more crazy: Apple 42 years, Google 21 years, OpenAI \~10 years, Anthropic \~5 years.

Link: https://www.top10in.tech/top-10-in-tech/top-10-in-tech-what-to-know-for-week-ending-march-13-2026

## 9. SUBSTITUTION

Public AI/closed models are getting more expensive, BUT [open models are getting cheaper and performing on par for a lot of day-to-day stuff.](https://theoryvc.com/blog-posts/are-foundation-models-and-application-companies-friends-or-foes) Some real-world examples - Coinbase: routing prompts to cheaper models. Lindy: switched 100% to DeepSeek v4 from Anthropic, saves millions, and performance is up on core use cases.

Link: https://theoryvc.com/blog-posts/are-foundation-models-and-application-companies-friends-or-foes

## 10. CASE STUDY

Cloud-first was never cloud-native. AI-first is the same. [Anthropic's Head of Industries, Eleanor Dorfman, walked through their actual GTM stack](https://www.saastr.com/the-gtm-stack-anthropic-uses-from-its-head-of-industries-surprisingly-familiar-names-used-in-new-ways) at SaaStr AI 2026: Friggin. Salesforce, Clay, Gong, Slack, Jira, Intercom Fin, Snowflake, BigQuery, G Suite. Same stuff everyone else has. Side bar fun facts -  54% of 2026 enterprise logos came through self-serve. 87% of AEs hit the number on $270K-$445K OTE\*\*.\*\*

Link: https://www.saastr.com/the-gtm-stack-anthropic-uses-from-its-head-of-industries-surprisingly-familiar-names-used-in-new-ways

## POD OF THE WEEK

One of my favs - Benedict Evans: AI is a 1997 internet moment - early, exciting, deeply uncertain about what comes next. His most controversial opinion: AI is as big a deal as the internet or mobile, and only as big. Why distribution is the ultimate moat as software gets easier to build, and a surprising boom in professional services at AI companies.

Link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-rational-conversation-on-where