SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK
For the UX/product people, this one is comprehensive: 20+ User Experience (UX) Metrics Every Product Manager Should Measure
Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending May 29, 2020
GROWTH MARKETING
Want some solid pro-tips on growth marketing ideas that just plain work? Here are a bunch collated from Intercom - a lot is centered around being user-focused and if you don’t like that one, try this: Notion’s marketing secrets for those of us with small teams.
AUSTIN
Not gonna lie - I’m a fan of this city…..and so are Tech Companies - there is a vibrant tech and VC scene down there in the Lone Star state. Crunchbase takes a look at Austin with a VC lens, which experienced record venture funding levels in 2019 - $1.84 billion - although 2020 remains obviously a little uncertain.
SALES
Strategies for a sales team come in many forms (all of which have a LOT of acronyms) - so which one is your team? Take a look here at this quick reference guide.
THE SERIES A
Another great experiential story. From a VC perspective, the Series A funding round is a stamp of approval. A legitimization that product-market-fit is evident and that there is a venture-backable market out there for the Business to target. From the PointNine Capital blog comes the story of how PlayPlay managed to raise their €10M Series A (broken down into a digestible 9 point play).
PR
Getting the elusive positive article in a relevant and respected publication can be absolute gold for any startup. But it’s hardly ever a focus/priority for founders. Check this article - Startup PR for Dummies - to digest everything a startup needs to understand on how to pursue great coverage (TL;DR it all starts with a great story).
B2B MARKETPLACES
Earlier this year I referenced the Marketplace 100 from a16z. A ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies and what might be next. This has a heavy Consumer focus - so what about B2B?. This article discusses current opportunities and challenges for B2B Marketplaces (such as Cargo.one, Alibaba, and Amazon Business).
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
(Positive) Customer relationships are at the core of every SaaS and subscription company. Negative experiences lead to churn that has a direct impact on the bottom line (duh!). Getting started isn’t as obvious as that last sentence though - check this Profitwell article on how to get started with a solid customer success strategy.
EXPANSION
Up-sell and Cross-sell are well-documented strategies for expanding revenues (especially in this newsletter). Expansion into new markets is another tactic and goParctice go into detail on how to launch successfully in new (tangental) markets.
PRODUCT MARKET FIT
How does a company know that they have achieved product-market fit? Andrew Chen from a16z calls this as a 5% conversion rate from free-to-paid, or 3X CPA to LTV ratio, or just a clear path to $100k MRR. Salesforce.io has an even more in depth deep dive that is also a 56 page Google Doc on how to find Product-Market Fit in the most capital-efficient and time-efficient way possible.
BONUS: We’re all Zoom Pro’s now - so from FYI comes a jam packed page full of all the stats you could imagine from Zoom.