# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending August 19, 2022

Published: 18 August 2022
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-august-19-2022

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Product Market Fit

Andrew Chen from a16z is excellent, and [his PDF/deck on going from zero to Product Market Fit](https://www.dropbox.com/s/py6zr7yi82psem1/andrewchen_zerototraction.pdf?dl=0) is awesome (For SaaS, he calls this a 5% conversion rate from free-to-paid, or 3X CPA to LTV ratio, or less than 2% monthly churn rate, or TL;DR.... just a clear path to $100k MRR). He also has an [accompanying article with notes](https://andrewchen.co/zero-to-productmarket-fit-presentation/).

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/py6zr7yi82psem1/andrewchen_zerototraction.pdf?dl=0

## 2. SALES OPS

For those lucky enough to be in Scale-Up mode. Scaling creates some real teething problems. Especially when it comes to revenue teams and moving beyond the founder being the primary (or only) salesperson. Eventually, a dedicated team will be needed ([that doesn't involve the founder)](https://www.saastock.com/blog/saas-sales-process). In modern times, Sales Ops operators are required to help coordinate cross-departmental activities to help a revenue organization hum. Read t[his Sales Ops primer article from Point Nine Capital](https://medium.com/point-nine-news/a-primer-on-sales-ops-a-k-a-sops-for-early-stage-b2b-founders-1407bb168d1e) on how to get all this started.

Link: https://www.saastock.com/blog/saas-sales-process

## 3. ROADMAPS

The old-school way always seemed clunky to me, especially in today's Agile workplaces. But Agile teams absolutely need them as a reference point and sense of direction with what's to come beyond their more myopic Sprint cycles. [Read here on the reasoning why](https://www.productplan.com/roadmap-templates-agile-teams) along with 5 roadmap templates to use. I'm a fan of how Atlassian have designed their [public accessible roadmap](https://trello.com/b/8XBuIeIu/atlassian-platform-for-developers-roadmap), and I have launched my own publicly accessible (Kanban-style) road map and even use it as part of the sales cycle - it works well!

Link: https://www.productplan.com/roadmap-templates-agile-teams

## 4. BURNOUT

If one thing the past few years have taught us via the [Great Resignation](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours)- it's that burnout is real! McKinsey explores burnout in the most Consulting way possible - [*are you asking the right question?*](https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/addressing-employee-burnout-are-you-solving-the-right-problem)

Link: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours

## 5. PLG STACKED

Adopting a PLG strategy requires unlocking a new tech set to traverse, so get your subscription wallets ready. Here is the mother load of tools you can use from the team at Product Led - [Product-Led Growth Tech Stack: 199 SaaS tools for growth.](https://productled.com/blog/product-led-growth-tech-stack) There is an extensive list of tools in there I already use - and I ain't even close to being PLG.

Link: https://productled.com/blog/product-led-growth-tech-stack

## 6. EXPERIMENTS

In a very enjoyable mentoring session last week, we took a deep dive into experimentation - because every path you take towards growth and revenue should be a hypothesis in startup land - time to upskill your experiment skills by reading [how to run a growth experiment](https://mannhowie.com/growth-experiment) (in 4 easy steps!). [Testing versions](https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/ab-tests/) of things is something to embed across your company and culture as you experiment towards growth - it's why failure is key to not failing. When conducting experiments such as A/B tests, get started with [this refresher](https://hbr.org/2017/06/a-refresher-on-ab-testing) and [Step-by-Step Guide](https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/ab-testing-google-analytics/). Go Practice has [some great advice on making these experiments run faster](https://gopractice.io/blog/ab-tests-take-longer-than-should/).

Link: https://mannhowie.com/growth-experiment

## 7. UNDERSELL

If expansion fits into your growth strategy (it should) take a read of the two-part series from Tomasz Tunguz and Bill Binch - part one is [deliberately underselling as a sales strategy](https://tomtunguz.com/deliberately-underselling/) to minimize churn and increase upsell/expansion opportunities as a land-and-expand strategy. Post 2 is an expansion of land and expand, which details [how to structure a Startup sales team for optimal land-and-expand](https://tomtunguz.com/how-to-structure-land-and-expand-ae/).

Link: https://tomtunguz.com/deliberately-underselling/

## 8. SDR RAMP

Kinda expanding on above. According to [past studies](https://blog.bridgegroupinc.com/hubfs/resources/SDRMetricsReport_TheBridgeGroup.pdf), the time to ramp for an SDR [average is about 3.2 months](https://medium.com/north-america-tech-for-kiwis/2018-sdr-metrics-report-from-the-bridge-group-f7fee0ad46df). From Saleshacker, [here are some tips and tricks](https://www.saleshacker.com/5-sdr-onboarding-ramp-hacks-sales-managers/) to make this ramp time as effective and successful as possible.

Link: https://blog.bridgegroupinc.com/hubfs/resources/SDRMetricsReport_TheBridgeGroup.pdf

## 9. GROWTH

Holy smokes - check [this play-by-play SaaS Growth Strategy](https://startupbusinesstips.substack.com/p/saas-growth-strategy-guide) post from Startup Business Tips - a free worksheet available for you [here too](https://www.dropbox.com/s/470nun89j6hs9oj/SaaS%20Growth%20Strategy%20Worksheet.pdf?dl=0).

Link: https://startupbusinesstips.substack.com/p/saas-growth-strategy-guide

## 10. CASE STUDY

Complimenting #6 above on experimenting**.** On the extreme end of A/B testing is [booking.com](http://booking.com) which [often runs over 1,000 tests simultaneously!](https://partner.booking.com/en-us/click-magazine/role-experimentation-bookingcom) But here is the payoff: [That flywheel](https://vwo.com/blog/cro-best-practices-booking/) enabled Booking.com to compound at healthy growth rates while maintaining ~30% EBITDA margins and scaling Google ad spend to approximately $4 billion per year!

Link: http://booking.com

## POD OF THE WEEK

It's the TL;DR Video version of #7 above on [how to structure a Startup sales team for optimal land-and-expand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90SIs242GVE).

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90SIs242GVE