# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending February 25, 2022

Published: 25 February 2022
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-february-25-2022

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: CPA

Cost *per* acquisition is often conflated with Cost *of* acquisition, but they are different. [Andrew Chen dives into the details as to why](https://andrewchen.co/how-to-actually-calculate-cac) (and also how to calculate CAC accurately).

Link: https://andrewchen.co/how-to-actually-calculate-cac

## 2. KNOWLEDGE BASE

This is very relevant to my pain right now. [Building a comprehensive and valuable customer Knowledge Base platform](https://www.saastock.com/blog/how-to-scale-saas-business-self-service-knowledge-base/) is difficult. Keep in mind that [67% of customers](https://customergauge.com/blog/why-customers-prefer-self-service-support-but-only-if-its-done-right/) prefer self-service (if executed well), and almost [90% of customers now expect a company's website to include a self-service application](https://www.statista.com/statistics/810374/share-of-customers-by-if-they-expect-brands-to-have-a-self-service-portal/).

Link: https://www.saastock.com/blog/how-to-scale-saas-business-self-service-knowledge-base/

## 3. SECURITY

According to a 2021 IDC cloud security study, [98% of companies experienced at least one cloud data breach in the past 18 months](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6cis0kwrtkct0l7/delinea-whitepaper-critical-controls-for-modern-cloud-security.pdf?dl=0)—up from 79% in the previous period. Security should be [part of the dev cycle and](https://www.heavybit.com/library/blog/what-teams-should-know-about-devsecops/) know your weak spots. Founder Institute discusses [6 points of vulnerability in a tech stack](https://fi.co/insight/keep-your-startup-safe-from-cyber-attacks-know-your-weak-spots) that may be a bit leaky, and the lessons from Log4j: [Cybersecurity defense isn't just about tech](https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/23/log4j-lesson-cybersecurity-defense-isnt-just-about-tech/).

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6cis0kwrtkct0l7/delinea-whitepaper-critical-controls-for-modern-cloud-security.pdf?dl=0

## 4. SHAPE UP

A refresher for your tech dictionaries. Software product development requires innovative strategies based on today's cadence expectations of continuous integration, micro-services, feature delivery, and scale. The team at [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/) (I'm an old school fan) have developed [ShapeUp, their publications, and a toolbox of techniques designed to eliminate chaos when it comes to creating, prioritizing, and shipping products/features](https://basecamp.com/shapeup).

Link: https://basecamp.com/

## 5. STARTUP SALARY

How much should you pay yourself as a founder after raising some capital? There are [lots of good answers and also lots of different situations](https://www.saastr.com/one-simple-rule-on-how-much-to-pay-yourself-once-you-raise-venture-capital). A good rule of thumb, [according to Nathan Latka](https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvf-6orD0jH9zUd5FcerkUK836IFApuC3r?mc_cid=ed649edb31&mc_eid=7121c45a64), is if you're a two-co-founders and just hit $1m in ARR, you should each be making about $100k per year and Increase to $150k at $2m in ARR.

Link: https://www.saastr.com/one-simple-rule-on-how-much-to-pay-yourself-once-you-raise-venture-capital

## 6. ESTIMATION

Estimating effort in Software projects is mega hard, and we're all terrible at it. McKinsey found that IT projects are on [average 45% over budget and 7% over schedule](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/delivering-large-scale-it-projects-on-time-on-budget-and-on-value), and the larger a project gets - the worse these stats become. So you should definitely bookmark this series (or share with the person you know that needs this bookmark) - [Estimating Software Projects by Jacob Kaplan-Moss](https://jacobian.org/series/estimation/) (and what to do when you mess up).

Link: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/delivering-large-scale-it-projects-on-time-on-budget-and-on-value

## 7. MARKETING FOR ENGINEERS

For all of you technical entrepreneurs who have built something and trying to get it out in the wild, check this [GitHub-based curated collection of marketing articles and tools](https://github.com/goabstract/Marketing-for-Engineers) to grow your product. It's the ultimate GTM Repo!.

Link: https://github.com/goabstract/Marketing-for-Engineers

## 8. GROWTH

Zoom, Slack, Dropbox, Chrome, etc., are all software products that most of us use every day - they are frequent products. It's Tax Season in the US, so my annual pilgrimage into TurboTax software land is just about to begin. I will be enthusiastically welcomed back (Turbo Tax is a [phenomenal lesson in good UX](https://uxdesign.cc/https-medium-com-ux-ui-analysis-of-turbotax-171c86d80a41) btw) - this is an outstanding lesson an excellent example of an infrequent Software product. The growth of an infrequent product is VERY different from that of those used frequently. Reforge have a great framework regarding this called [the ICED Theory.](https://www.reforge.com/blog/iced-theory-growing-infrequent-products) (add it to your tech dictionaries) It's a great post discussing the nuances of infrequency, and they have just launched a complementary article to this post on [strategies to grow an infrequent product](https://www.reforge.com/blog/strategies-to-grow-infrequent-products).

Link: https://uxdesign.cc/https-medium-com-ux-ui-analysis-of-turbotax-171c86d80a41

## 9. PRIVATE MARKETS

From [Carta's](https://carta.com/) perspective, here is a look at the [state of private capital markets leveraging their data](https://carta.com/blog/state-of-private-markets-report-q4-2021). The number of rounds increased 31% over 2020 to over 7500, and the proportional amount of [cash invested was up 111%](https://carta.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Record-setting-year-in-fundraising.png)!!! Every sector saw an increase in dollars - but [healthcare saw the most significant jump](https://carta.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Health-and-biotech-surged-ahead.png). 2022 has already been a year of correction - so I'll report back at the end of Q1.

Link: https://carta.com/

## 10. CASE STUDY

Adobe! Remember when Adobe products were just software licenses? This seems like a generation ago in Tech years. Adobe Creative Cloud launched a decade ago in mid-2012, and the transition was fast; Creative Cloud surpassed product revenues VERY quickly (by [mid-2013](https://blog.chartmogul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tunguz-adobe-chart-720x540.png)). Adobe now is at a [whopping $12.24B ARR](https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2021/Adobe-Reports-Record-Q4-and-Fiscal-2021-Revenue-Company-Outlines-Strategy-for-Next-Decade-of-Growth/default.aspx) just on subscriptions revenue (as of Q4 2021). Here are [seven lessons for us all on this transition](https://medium.com/bigfootcapital/7-lessons-from-adobes-successful-transition-to-saas-d0f7250ab352), and from ChartMogul, [here is a break down the strategy that got them here](https://blog.chartmogul.com/adobe-saas-pivot-strategy/).

Link: https://blog.chartmogul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tunguz-adobe-chart-720x540.png