The weekly top 10 for B2B tech operators · Every Friday
Two cool publications. The first one was sent from a buddy of mine, "The Ultimate Guide to ARR," which offers practical advice on measuring, influencing, and reporting ARR based on experiences at Intercom, Atlassian, and Stripe; the second one is from Bessemer Ventures and claims to be a founder's roadmap to $100 million ARR.
Here is one more for your tech dictionaries - MSVP stands for Minimum Viable Secure Product. This is a simplified security checklist for B2B software and outsourcing providers. It outlines essential controls to ensure a minimal yet effective security posture. Not quite the SOC/ISO/APRA level stuff some of us have to deal with - but great for those of you outside of Enterprise and Financial Services.
This is the annual refresher for your tech dictionaries and reading list. 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 (I'm an old-school fan) has developed ShapeUp, their publications, and toolbox of techniques designed to eliminate chaos when it comes to designing, prioritizing, and shipping products/features.
Carta's latest report takes a look at investments into pre-seed/Seed Stage companies - SAFEs are the most common instruments in pre-seed financings, most pre-seed rounds are around $1M, and the typical valuation cap is $8-$10M. 88% of pre-priced rounds use SAFEs instead of convertibles. This underlines the ongoing shift towards more flexible and founder-friendly funding mechanisms.
Silicon Valley/Bay Area is still dominant and secured more than 50% of all global investments into AI startups last year, according to Crunchbase (and that's nearly double the prior year's total: $27B vs. $14B). Despite repeated claims of its imminent demise throughout the years, Silicon Valley ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
The bubble builds? AI valuations are soaring big time, with early-stage AI companies valued above $70 million and late-stage at around $100 million in Q1 2024, according to this PitchBook report. While the rest of us in the VC landscape see an increase in flat and down rounds, AI remains a top focus for investors. Some investors out there (such as Sierra Ventures) are calling for a more diversified approach within AI and caution against the short-term hype we have seen a few times before. There are already some signals that not all is well. Gross Margins may not be that great, either.
Coming off the back of last week's quite popular post on Growth Marketing - is it even marketing in the first place? I like this find, and I've been sitting on it a little while - but share it with your marketing team: The Strategic Growth Calendar Framework is a year-long blueprint that combines "Always On"growth channels with impactful "Marketing Moments." Emphasizing integrating steady, foundational channels like SEO and email with high-impact campaigns such as product launches, events, influencer collaborations, and the like. Aligning these strategies with seasonal demand over your calendar year optimizes planning and (hopefully) continuous/steady growth throughout the year.
I had a bit of a unique GenAI moment this week, my first inbound lead from ChatGPT and hopefully not the last. Do we need a form of LLM SEO? Meta is also now sticking generative features into its core advertising platform, which lets ads be generated programmatically. The big question here: Will my organic traffic disappear because of AI?
Startups need them; often they can be a little over plentiful and a little predatory. If you find a sound advisor, how should they be compensated? Peter Walker from Carta has some data for you. TL;DR market rates are 0.23%-0.07% median based on stage unless full-time hires who get 1% typically.
Squarespace is now part of the $1 Billion+ ARR Club with $1.1 billion in annual revenue. They have also decided to delist and go Private. At private sale, they were valued at $7 billion, which works out to be about 6x ARR and growing nearly 20% YoY.
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