# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending November 28, 2025

Published: 28 November 2025
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-november-28-2025

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: GES

[Growth Endurance Score](https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/a-guide-to-growth-endurance-score)is a metric that assesses a company's ability to sustain growth over time. GES measures this efficiency by factoring in both net retention and customer acquisition efficiency. A high GES correlates with long-term business health and resilience. This score provides valuable insights for businesses aiming for consistent, sustainable growth. Bessemer has [drilled deeper into it and plotted ARR growth lost YoY](https://www.bvp.com/atlas/scaling-to-100-million#Growth-Endurance), and found that the decay is fairly predictable at 30%. That's a benchmark - in other words, you should expect next year's growth rate to be 70% of the current year, as the stakes get higher.

Link: https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/a-guide-to-growth-endurance-score

## 2. AI BENCHMARKS

HubSpot benchmarked 500 startups' AI-GTM setups in [this 3-part report](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/ai/ai-in-gtm-report-pt1) ([part 2](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/ai/ai-in-gtm-report-pt2) and [part 3](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/ai/ai-in-gtm-report-pt3) here) - 37% say AI lowered CAC and 72% improved upsell/cross-sell. Those Startups dedicating 50%+ of their GTM tech stack to AI hit meaningful scale: higher ARR brackets, and outsized efficiency. Some major barriers remain for many of us: 23% cite high cost, 17% cite a lack of AI expertise.

Link: https://www.hubspot.com/startups/ai/ai-in-gtm-report-pt1

## 3. GROWTH LEVERS

Fast follow from number 2 above, a lot of startups say AI growth is now cheap. Kyle Poyar's Growth Unhinged shows how top PLG [teams spend less on new channels, yet sell more](https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/how-ai-could-make-you-more-valuable) via AI-driven content, intent-outbound, and search. If you're not treating AI as your growth stack, you're probably falling behind.

Link: https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/how-ai-could-make-you-more-valuable

## 4. MOATS

A16z revisits their 2020 classic: [margins don't make great companies, moats do](https://a16z.com/moats-before-gross-margins/). In this new AI-infused era, [defensibility still comes from the old pillars](https://www.a16z.news/p/moats-before-gross-margins-revisited) - network effects, brand, scale, switching costs, proprietary tech - and now, momentum reeeeaaallly matters too. High margins alone can be a red flag that your product isn't using AI.

Link: https://a16z.com/moats-before-gross-margins/

## 5. WRITING

Here is a bit that flips on the AI panic: [it's not writers getting replaced, it's readers](https://theamericanscholar.org/baby-shoggoth-is-listening/). It's kinda like SEO - writers start optimizing for LLMs as their true audience, trading human readers for influence and speculative digital immortality....let the [enshitifcation](https://haylett.co/blog/the-enshitification-of-online-content) or [dead internet theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory) flow!

Link: https://theamericanscholar.org/baby-shoggoth-is-listening/

## 6. HIRING

Hey founders - here is a pretty accurate techism: [You will never be able to hire anyone better than you](https://nav.al/curate-people). Y'all set the talent ceiling, so curate your team like your product. Recruiting is the game.

Link: https://nav.al/curate-people

## 7. NAME

Who knew that picking a company name could be complicated? Picking a company name looks simple - but most of us skip the hard parts. According to [First Round Review's playbook](https://review.firstround.com/how-to-pick-company-name/), you should derive names from your positioning statement, brainstorm hundreds of options, test how your audience pronounces and remembers them, then vet for domain, trademark, and growth-fit.

Link: https://review.firstround.com/how-to-pick-company-name/

## 8. AI WARS v2

I've talked about the Public Cloud AI wars underway in [the past](https://www.top10in.tech/top-10-in-tech/top-10-in-tech-what-to-know-for-week-ending-may-30-2025), and [the Clouded Judgement blog has picked up on it too](https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-112025-the-ai-platform) - Model scores don't rule anymore. With [Gemini 3.0 that Google launched last week](https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-3), Google isn't just chasing benchmark wins, it's bundling AI into Android, Chrome, Workspace, and more (like [doubling AI capacity every 6 months](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/21/google-must-double-ai-serving-capacity-every-6-months-to-meet-demand.html)!). Anyway, Google AI is all over my shit this week - [here is how to turn it all off](https://ca.news.yahoo.com/turn-off-gemini-ai-across-070000409.html)! The fight now is distribution, tools, and ecosystem -where we all touch AI every day.

Link: https://www.top10in.tech/top-10-in-tech/top-10-in-tech-what-to-know-for-week-ending-may-30-2025

## 9. VALUATIONS

There is a lot in here. [The latest from Data Driven VC](https://www.newsletter.datadrivenvc.io/p/how-much-is-your-startup-worth-these-days-here-s-the-state-of-the-market-in-november-2025) shows that top-tier private tech companies are losing ~20% of their value month over month; AI & crypto are still dominating; and EV/NTM revenue multiples have compressed significantly across sectors.

Link: https://www.newsletter.datadrivenvc.io/p/how-much-is-your-startup-worth-these-days-here-s-the-state-of-the-market-in-november-2025

## 10. CASE STUDY

Check this [deep-dive on Microsoft's AI strategy](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/microsofts-ai-strategy-deconstructed) - which traces the "big pause" in datacenter build-out, how the Azure-OpenAI tie-up evolved, and why the real battleground now is tokens and infrastructure economics (see #8 above!).

Link: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/microsofts-ai-strategy-deconstructed

## POD OF THE WEEK

Lenny's Newsletter breaks down the clearest [coldstart guide to building with AI](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/this-week-on-how-i-ai-0-to-1-ai-guide): how to scope an AI product, when not to use models, evaluation traps, and what real teams ship first. If you're building anything AI-adjacent in 2026, use this to get your brain started.

Link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/this-week-on-how-i-ai-0-to-1-ai-guide