# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 29, 2022

Published: 28 April 2022
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-april-29-2022

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: PQL

Product Lead Growth is the new SaaS strategy de-jour. All kinds of metrics tie into this new category - [Product Qualified Leads (PQL) being the lead indicator that the PLG strategy a company is investing in is legit.](https://productled.com/how-to-decide-if-someone-is-a-product-qualified-lead)

Link: https://productled.com/how-to-decide-if-someone-is-a-product-qualified-lead

## 2. ONBOARDING CHURN

This is the sibling to the post above, as abandonment can signal poor onboarding. Here are [3 reasons why users abandon the onboarding process](https://www.icarvision.com/en/3-reasons-why-we-abandon-the-onboarding-process-) (identify verification, slow onboarding experiences, and being asked for too much data). Appsee has another 8 reasons in [this article](https://medium.com/@Appseecom/what-makes-users-abandon-your-app-f75176851c45) (adding Privacy and Ad clutter to the list).

Link: https://www.icarvision.com/en/3-reasons-why-we-abandon-the-onboarding-process-

## 3. WEB3

There is a whole new bunch of vocabulary to learn if you don't want to be seen as a big square at all your Web3 parties. Check [this Twitter thread from @MishadaVinci](https://twitter.com/MishadaVinci/status/1515673102566318082?s=20&t=F3nnTRzMKD3_cYSnEIW2Ow), which covers all of the highfalutin' terms.

Link: https://twitter.com/MishadaVinci/status/1515673102566318082?s=20&t=F3nnTRzMKD3_cYSnEIW2Ow

## 4. CUSTOMER SUCCESS - Quota

this is an expansion of celebrating CS's contribution as NRR and CAC payback referenced in #1 above. I have referenced [AE](https://medium.com/north-america-tech-for-kiwis/new-saas-report-from-the-bridge-group-680c2b7cd3d6) and [SDR](https://medium.com/north-america-tech-for-kiwis/2018-sdr-metrics-report-from-the-bridge-group-f7fee0ad46df) metrics and quotas in past newsletters. But what about quota expectations in renewal and cross-sell/upsell within a Customer Success Team? [Tomasz Tunguz takes a look](https://tomtunguz.com/how-much-arr-can-a-csm-manage) based on a [report a couple of years back from Gainsight](https://www.gainsight.com/blog/customer-success-team-planning-cost-benchmarks). Most Customer Success Managers can handle between ***$2-$5M in ARR*** and between ***10-500 accounts*** (but it varies based on segment/ACMR).

Link: https://medium.com/north-america-tech-for-kiwis/new-saas-report-from-the-bridge-group-680c2b7cd3d6

## 5. a16z

Watch out Y-Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz has apparently been stealthily piloting their own early-stage accelerator over the past year and went public this month with what they are calling "[a16z START](https://a16z.com/programs-a16z-start/)". They are offering early-stage founders [up to $1 m in venture capital](https://siliconangle.com/2022/04/18/andreessen-horowitz-launches-a16z-start-startup-accelerator/)! Not sure how much equity that will require, and a16z will be accepting founders on a rolling basis.

Link: https://a16z.com/programs-a16z-start/

## 6. PRICING FEATURETTE

Last week's article on pricing pages was a popular post, so I'm doubling down with more this week. Optimizing Pricing is hard, and it's never (ever) perfect. a) If companies decide to have a pricing page on their site (which is that whole [other topic](https://www.inboundmantra.com/blog/pricing-page-right-for-your-saas-business#:~:text=For%20many%20businesses%20with%20a,website%20will%20work%20the%20best.&text=For%20enterprise%20customers%2C%20pricing%20does,the%20SaaS%20company%20is%20offering.) I mentioned last week), [Jason Lemkin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin/), the founder of [SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/), lays out some thoughts on [what makes a good pricing page](https://www.saastr.com/what-do-you-think-makes-a-good-saas-pricing-page). b) McKinsey gets technical, outlining how to[leverage big data to make better pricing decisions](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/using-big-data-to-make-better-pricing-decisions). c) Want to look at competitor prices? [Computers](https://competera.net/) have a great article on [conducting a high fidelity competitive pricing analysis project](https://competera.net/resources/articles/competitive-pricing-analysis).

Link: https://www.inboundmantra.com/blog/pricing-page-right-for-your-saas-business#:~:text=For%20many%20businesses%20with%20a,website%20will%20work%20the%20best.&text=For%20enterprise%20customers%2C%20pricing%20does,the%20SaaS%20company%20is%20offering.

## 7. PODCASTS

Podcasts will make up nearly [20% of Spotify's US ad revenues by 2024](https://www.emarketer.com/content/podcasts-spotify-us-ad-revenues) - whoa! In dollar amounts, that will be $400 million. This is just as well as [fake artists are a problem](https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much?s=r) these days on Spotify. Podcasting is a massive business now, with an estimated [120 million podcast listeners in the US last year.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/786826/podcast-listeners-in-the-us/) Podcasting is forecast to be a [$94.88 billion industry by 2028](https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/the-podcast-industry-report-statistics/). According to this Annual Report from Edison Research, growth is also corollary to Smart Speaker ownership in households.

Link: https://www.emarketer.com/content/podcasts-spotify-us-ad-revenues

## 8. VIDEO

According to this survey, the use of video [Aids 95% Of Enterprise B2B Buyers](https://links.responder.co.il/?lid=27106909&sid=459160345&k=4274e57789b2a7507c63925c8a20bb92) in Conversion - read more (and how it does this) [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/nb1wx41f7jwqqvu/WP_The_Power_Of_Video_in_B2B.pdf?dl=0).

Link: https://links.responder.co.il/?lid=27106909&sid=459160345&k=4274e57789b2a7507c63925c8a20bb92

## 9. BENCHMARKS

Bessemer VP has [a playbook for us all](https://www.bvp.com/atlas/scaling-from-1-to-10-million-arr) (and a [slide deck](https://www.slideshare.net/BessemerVP/scaling-from-1-to-10-million-arr)) describing how to scale your business from $1 to $10mm ARR. Significant benchmark data covering all the classics: CAC, retention, growth, etc.

Link: https://www.bvp.com/atlas/scaling-from-1-to-10-million-arr

## 10. CASE STUDY

Category creation! I know we all want to be up and to the left is one of those Gartner/Forrester Quadrant reports. So watch this [presentation on category creation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLWAShU0RYk) from Neo4 and how they did it, and here is [another version from Gett](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhHcv91obXk).

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLWAShU0RYk

## POD OF THE WEEK

Complimenting #9 above ( but with the added challenge of doing it without any outside capital), [how FastBridge scaled from $0 to $10m in just four years](https://soundcloud.com/user-941742884/234-0-to-10-million-in-4-years-how-one-saas-startup-scaled-sold-without-outside-capital?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fuser-941742884%252F234-0-to-10-million-in-4-years-how-one-saas-startup-scaled-sold-without-outside-capital).

Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-941742884/234-0-to-10-million-in-4-years-how-one-saas-startup-scaled-sold-without-outside-capital?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fuser-941742884%252F234-0-to-10-million-in-4-years-how-one-saas-startup-scaled-sold-without-outside-capital