Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 4, 2020

SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK

RETENTION is key to growth and profitability and businesses that truly want to put their customers at the centre of their business are the ones most likely to succeed. Check UserPilots article on how to build a marketing-based retention strategy that works and how to measure it.

SALES

It’s all about the journey! Take a good read of this “ultimate" sales pipeline guide from Close.com, covering stages, key metrics and templates (whaaaat! Oh yeah) - this guide is a keeper.

CONTENT

Its a must have for a modern SaaS business, but good content (and not all that super fluffy stuff) is super critical not just for this newsletter (ahem) but is a must-have for a SaaS Sales Team - this article gives 3 solid reasons why you should double down on it.

CYBER

With all kinds of cyber attacks happening lately (The FBI has see a 400% increase in reports of Cyberattacks since the Strat of Covid), it’s time to hammer this home: Regardless of the size of your SaaS business, security should be part of your dev cycle but also know your weak spots. Founder Institute discusses 6 points of vulnerability in a tech stack that may be a bit leaky. Security needs to be rolled up into the process - DevSecOps being the new port-portmanteau or is that SecDevOps? - anywhoooo……beyond the DevSecOps article, Heavybit also have a great article discussing cloud security challenges (as apparently, if we extrapolate this out, 88% of SaaS is now sitting on public cloud).

MLP

Thats the adorable acronym - Minimum Lovable Product. MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is OK but what if no-one likes it? FirstRound capital use the analogy of burnt pizza - pointing out that the fastest and cheapest functional prototype could produce a poor or flawed version of something that people may actually love. No-one likes burnt pizza!

NO

Two sides of the no-coin here….a bit of a NO deep dive. This first one was shared by my one of my team this week and thought it was too good to not share. Learning to say no is the most important skill a programmer can learn - TL;DR - it’s all about keeping code base small and solving the right problems! When it comes to selling No is almost a curse-word. So this article goes into depth of ways to be Yes, rather than have to say no - it’s a great way to think about how to say yes through product.

COVID-CONSUMERS

Has there ever been a more dramatic and acute impact to global economies, peoples health, and consumer behavior than this pandemic? Not that I can think of. It’s been devastating. McKinsey have taken a deep dive exploring the pandemics impact on consumers’ lives and have some thoughts on what changes may be sticky/permanent. If your business engages with consumers (or even just a human) use this as a striating point to rethink how, what, and where people will gather information, procure, and experience purchases.

PROCRASTINATION

I left this one for last. Warning! Adult content ahead. Cover your eyes for this next sentence if you don’t want to see. A wise, but juvenile friend once said this to me many moons ago: “procrastination is like masturbation, you just end up &^)$ing yourself”. It was funny at the time, but that statement has stuck with me through thick and thin in my adult life…. To be more like Nike and just do it. Chronic procrastination is real and, to be honest, something I struggle with at times especially given the current demand for my attention from a variety of sources - it’s the enemy of cranking out a weekly newsletter while trying to enjoy a morning cup of coffee for example. So don’t wait! Take a read of this two part guide to stopping procrastination using the Fogg behavior model: Part 1 and Part 2. (TL;DR: Behavior = motivation + ability + trigger)

BURN RATE

Zoom is an astonishing success story in the SaaS world. Even this week, their earnings call caused over a 40% bump in their stock price in A SINGLE DAY (that delta is a sweet $5B to the CEO if anyone is interested). There are some great insights to the Zoom story and earlier tshie month, Jason Lemkin of SaaStr uncovered a fascinating one - Zoom had a burn rate budget. What the heck is that? Don’t worry, I had the same question. Zoom’s OpEx was the same as gross revenue - the CEO had told the team exactly how much they could spend — as an entire team. Jason sees this as nothing but upside: It will reduce your stress. Increase efficiency. Enhance focus. Not decrease productivity.

MISTAKES

A somewhat morbid post-mortem article from Failory who analyzed over 80 startups who have failed and identified some of their common mistakes (some fatal). Marketing problems seem the most abundant (and deadly) - but product-market-fit, market size, and value add are all creeping around too.