# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 14, 2019

Published: 14 June 2019
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-june-14-2019

## 1. SALES

This week in sales the focus is on Social Selling. According to Hubspot, salespeople who adopt social selling at an organization [increase both the win rate and deal size, by 5% and 35% respectively](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/8-things-you-must-do-to-maximize-your-success-with-social-selling/555318).

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/8-things-you-must-do-to-maximize-your-success-with-social-selling/555318

## 2. VC’s

Ever wonder exactly how Venture Capitalists make money/pay themselves? [Here is a quick look at their unit economics](https://medium.com/s/story/how-venture-capitalists-make-money-9af5cc3ff2ef).

Link: https://medium.com/s/story/how-venture-capitalists-make-money-9af5cc3ff2ef

## 3. M&A

SalesForce is a SaaS data monster and Tableau, a publicly traded BI company, have been trying to [migrate over to a more subscription based model for some time](https://www.channelfutures.com/cloud-2/new-tableau-ceo-seeks-smoother-sales-with-subscription-push). In a deal that kinda makes sense in hindsight, Salesforce [announced this week](http://fortune.com/2019/06/10/salesforce-tableau-google-msft) that it will be purchasing Tableau for a whopping $15.7 Billion USD (this is the 3rd largest acquisition price since 2012). . [Tomasz Tunguz takes a deeper look at the acquisition](https://tomtunguz.com/setting-the-salesforce-tableau-acquisition-in-context) and the consolidation of big Data/BI business.

Link: https://www.channelfutures.com/cloud-2/new-tableau-ceo-seeks-smoother-sales-with-subscription-push

## 4. UPSELL

The [importance of upsell](https://www.chargebee.com/blog/upselling-saas/) to the overall growth of a SaaS company is well understood. But [when to start up-selling](https://www.cobloom.com/blog/when-should-you-upsell-your-saas-customers#) is a more important strategic question.

Link: https://www.chargebee.com/blog/upselling-saas/

## 5. FAILURE (pt 2)

Last week [was about founder failures](https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/The-20-Reasons-Startups-Fail.pdf), but failure is not just for founders. It’s for VC’s too. Ben Evans [dives deeper into failure as a metric for VC](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/4/28/winning-and-losing) and also notes that there is no such thing as a 10x return in the VC world (it’s more like 26x and in some cases 64x).

Link: https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/The-20-Reasons-Startups-Fail.pdf

## 6. CRO

That stands for [Conversation Rate Optimization](https://moz.com/learn/seo/conversion-rate-optimization) and Banklinko have created [a great web guide](https://backlinko.com/conversion-rate-optimization) about what it is and how to design for CRO within a business.

Link: https://moz.com/learn/seo/conversion-rate-optimization

## 7. GROWTH

[Organic growth](https://blog.markgrowth.com/xeros-growth-strategy-how-they-acquired-350k-saas-users-in-the-last-12-months-c077b66145e) is the holy grail of tech companies and there exists a lot of mythology and lore around the best ways to drive this kind of growth. The smart people at McKinsey [take a look at four of the top myths](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/debunking-four-myths-of-organic-growth) (and debunk them).

Link: https://blog.markgrowth.com/xeros-growth-strategy-how-they-acquired-350k-saas-users-in-the-last-12-months-c077b66145e

## 8. FINTECH

The big 3 Tech Companies (Apple, Amazon, and Google) are taking financial services by storm and forecast to grab up to 40% of the $1.35 trillion in US financial services revenue from incumbent banks (according to McKinsey) In [this Business Insider report](https://nztradeandenterprise-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/jon_davies_nzte_govt_nz/ETuvCELlSnJFlNCGylSTBgsBkXzTqlUlcDtfw2WNtC9LEg?e=sYMqhj), a full competitor analysis is presented to the global financial industry. Great stuff!

Link: https://nztradeandenterprise-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/jon_davies_nzte_govt_nz/ETuvCELlSnJFlNCGylSTBgsBkXzTqlUlcDtfw2WNtC9LEg?e=sYMqhj

## 9. BRANDS

And it’s not just FinTech where Apple, Amazon and Google dominate. In this years [most valuable brands survey](https://brandz.com/admin/uploads/files/BZ_Global_2019_WPP.pdf) by BrandZ. [nine of the top ten brands are Tech (or FinTech) companies](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/11/amazon-beats-apple-and-google-to-become-the-worlds-most-valuable-brand.html) (shoutout to MickeyD’s as the non-tech company), with Amazon taking the number one spot followed closely by Apple and Google.

Link: https://brandz.com/admin/uploads/files/BZ_Global_2019_WPP.pdf

## 10. SCALE

One of the hardest parts of scaling a company is having to let good people go. This often happens when they are no longer suited for the growth stage of the business. But what if this person is a founder? [The Founder Collective discuss in this article](https://medium.com/swlh/what-to-do-when-a-co-founder-cant-scale-feec9570f10a).

Link: https://medium.com/swlh/what-to-do-when-a-co-founder-cant-scale-feec9570f10a

## POD OF THE WEEK

New this week from How I Built This, [the story of a company you all may have heard of: AllBirds](https://www.npr.org/player/embed/730695224/730699172)**BONUS**: [DevGuild](https://www.heavybit.com/devguild) do amazing half day conferences here in SF. I go whenever I can and drag customers along with me. The last one myself and the team at Marsello attended as it was focused on Product Marketing - a timely subject for them. You can [re-broadcast some or all of the day here](https://www.heavybit.com/devguild/product-marketing). I highly recommend the Hiten Shah presentation on [The Three Steps of Continuous Customer Obsession](https://youtu.be/W1ykxIxb1Ow)

Link: https://www.npr.org/player/embed/730695224/730699172