The weekly top 10 for B2B tech operators · Every Friday
Multiples. Valuation multiples are so important for determining a company's worth. But they also seem so mysterious as they vary wildly based on growth stage, industry, and deal size. Dealroom has a multiples valuation guide with some great visuals and charts to help us all understand this mysterious metric better and also make data-driven decisions.
Here is a sharp take on the identity shift ahead. Software engineers are facing a massive identity crisis in the AI age (and so are Product Designers). As coding commodifies (is that a word?), devs must shift from "builders" to "designers of intelligent systems." Product design shifts from crafting UI to orchestrating intelligent workflows.
Non-dilutive funding is having a moment. Startups are increasingly turning to grants, revenue-based financing, and venture debt to extend runways without giving up equity. This post breaks down when and how to tap each one.
Do you also feel personally attacked by the title of this article, "You Suck at Marketing." As an operator wearing many hats, including marketing, I begrudgingly have to agree. Most of what works for us inbound, and the result of Content Marketing - so read this article from the team at Organic SaaS Growth on how to be less sucky at that.
Product Compass has rounded up a bunch of the best Product management frameworks—from Jobs-to-be-Done to RICE—and shows how to apply them contextually (not religiously). An excellent resource for not just PMs, but people who want signal over structure.
A new for our tech dictionaries: Seed Strapping is the middle ground between bootstrapping and blitzscaling—raising just enough to find product-market fit while keeping burn and dilution low. Smart, flexible, and, in this new kinda venture market, increasingly popular.
Stanford University is back with a 2025 version of their Artificial Intelligence Index Report (the 2024 version can be found here). It's not a quick read. Private AI investment hit a record $252.3B, U.S. funding in GenAI alone hit $109B—12x China. 78% of companies are now using AI (up from 55%), inference costs (cost of running AI prod) dropped 280x in 2 years, but performance is plateauing, and the AI marketplace is getting cramped!
Another entry for your tech dictionaries, this framework laid the foundation for scalable, maintainable SaaS. From config to logging to dev/prod parity—it's essential reading for any of us building modern software.
Inspired by the 12-Factor Apps methodology in #8 above, this Git-Hub repo outlines what it takes to build 12-Factor AI Agents - from runtime modularity to tool use, feedback loops, and logging. If you're more on the techy-side and serious about deploying LLM agents in production, this is a great read.
ChatGPT doubled its weekly active users in \<6 months, hitting 180M+. Credit goes to GPTs (custom bots), voice features, and Assistants API. Product velocity + sticky features = growth.
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