1. NETWORKING: Scaling a tech company requires a bunch of know who. But networking is hard regardless of personality type. Here are some great tips from a veteran introvert. Be Curious!
2. SaaS IPO’s:  Ever heard of the Mendoza line? Well it’s a rule of thumb metric and also a numerical to help SaaS Companies answer that incredibly frequent question “How fast do I need to be growing to be interesting to a venture investor?
3. VC DEEP DIVE: Upfront Ventures took a deeper look at some assumptions floating around about the current state of Venture Capital. The whole deck can be viewed here on SlideShare, but a nice summary article is here. HIGHLIGHTS: 1. Traditional Seed and VC is now more valuable than ever. 2.Value is now more in private markets over public.
4. STREAMING: Last year a misleading news article made the rounds announcing that Vinyl record sales exceeded digital. While this fact was true (and Vinyl Records sales were surging), it didn’t mention that streaming surpassed digital sales in 2015 (mpWhat?), or that the vast majority of all spend in music is now on streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music. An interesting consequence of this is that in the past 5 years the average song length has shrunk by about 20 seconds (due to the economics of streaming). By the numbers streaming’s share of revenue in 2015 was about 1/3. In 2018 it’s over three quarters of all industry revenue.
5. AI: New Zealand has officially launched an AI Road Map that consider future impacts and how to respond. A fantastic forward thinking approach to this sector which is progressing at an incredibly fast pace.
6. GOVERNANCE: Mark Suster (from Upfront Ventures) has started a series on his Medium Blog covering StartUp Boards. With a follow up article (which I think is very relevant to NZ startups) which shows a board structure based on stage!
7. CUSTOMER INSIGHT: When building good product, it seems as though businesses often try to understand their customers in ways that are misleading (you should click all three links in a row), The focus on knowing more about customers takes a product or business in the wrong direction. Successful approaches help customers solve problems by not necessarily understanding everything about them, but by identifying the jobs that need to be done.
8. GOOGLE: Couple of interesting announcements this week: 1. Hybrid Cloud is growing and Google’s hybrid Cloud Services Platform is now available in beta. 2. Google is reportedly developing a Netflix-like cloud streaming service for online games called Project Stream.
9. DATA: We ran a successful NZ8 event for some of our tech and eCommerce companies earlier this week. The topic was on how to build world class data based organizations. Why is this important? I think McKinsey do a fantastic job of explaining why and how.
10. HIRING: Making bad hiring mistakes is almost like a badge of honor that founders need to make. Mitigating (not preventing) poor hiring choices is important to cash. Tomasz Tunguz reviews common mistake in hiring plans: and Jason Lemkin looks at what to look at with Account Exec Resumes.z

​POD OF THE WEEK: This Week in Startups features Keith Rabois (Breaking news! Keith was at Khosla Ventures but is leaving for Founders Fund)

BONUS: Ask Nicley will be featured in a great webinar on the 26th PST/27th NZST this month. The topic is 5 Ways to Scale Customer Experiences through Front-Line Collaboration

1. SMARTPHONES: Folding display screens are coming for your phones. With both Samsung and Xiaomi announcing and demonstrating prototypes earlier this year and again this week.
2. FACEBOOK: The Federal Cartel Office (FCO), which is the Anti-trust Watchdog of Germany has ordered Facebook to stop combining user data across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. The FCO argues that Facebook’s market dominance makes it impossible for users to give true voluntary consent. This could really impact Facebooks ability to deploy targeted advertising using hyper-personal profiles. (Which will likely upset a major part of its current business model).
3. SaaS GROWTH: One of the best presentations at SaaStr Annual this year was by Mark Roberge of Stage 2 Capital and Harvard Business School. Providing a handy step-by-step guide to revenue growth (downloadable PDF). 
4. FREE TRIALS? This is good. The Top 10 Learnings from the Redpoint Free Trial Survey results were released during SaaStr Annual last week. Lets start with the fact that top quartile respondents observe net dollar retention of 120% - upsell/crosssell and renewals are key! The other interesting tidbit - What is the optimal duration of a Free Trial? Turns out that it doesn’t matter. Conversion results at 7 days, 14 days, 21 days and 30 days all stayed at pretty much the same rate (15-16%).
5. TEXT MESSAGES: Have you ever wanted a deeper dive into the effectiveness of texting as a business tool? Huh!?! you say. Well me too. But check it out. It’s a really powerful communication tool (as long as you reply).
6. PRODUCT LAUNCH: Take a deep dive with the team from Intercom on evolving product launches at scale.
7. SUBSCRIPTION DELIVERIES: The science and data behind the subscription delivery movement of the last few years. Why do we love them so much? 
8. AI: Artificial Intelligence is the next big technological thing (as long as we manage it ethically). So who will be a stand out AI Business in 2019? Business Insider takes a look at 12 with potential.
9. SEED: 2018 was a measurable banner of a year for VC spend - records were broken. Things seem rosy, but while we saw cheque size increasing, and competition between investors intensifying, that is not necessarily the rule of thumb for companies at Seed Stage of growth, with seed investments down by all measure (dollars, deals and funds).
10. TRANSFORMATION: Digitalizing the business model has had massive dramatic effects on many companies in recent years. But how do companies progress their efforts to digitalize the business model? This is a great overview of how to think about this strategically and tactically from the team at McKinsey.

POD OF THE WEEK: McKinsey discuss how companies can ethically deploy artificial intelligence.

BONUS: The Information are currently testing out their news and analyst services by providing courses on specific topics. Very interesting approach. Check out their first course, all about……….Scooters…well, “Micromobility” You can register for this 101 course here. It’s a 15-day guided primer on the multi-billion dollar global industry for small transportation vehicles, one of the most hyped startup sectors to emerge over the past year. 

1. SECURITY: Data breaches are, unfortunately, an ever evolving and trending topic. One of the biggest breaches to date, with 773 Million records discovered, was reported last month. So how do you as a consumer know if any of your online accounts or passwords are compromised? Luckily the team at TroyHunt are trying to solve that problem and have built a portal to check both compromised email addresses AND, more importantly, Passwords breached.  PRO-TIP: Password managers are a good thing, as is Multi-Factor Authentication.
2. VC: 18 charts that really illustrate the state off US Venture Capital in 2018. Records were reached and looking forward to 2019, thanks today in this report from Silicon Valley Bank, the Unicorns of today raise nearly 4x the historical average for venture-backed tech companies at IPO.
3. FINTECH: FinTechNZ just launched a detailed NZ FinTech ecosystem map. It’s a fun one to review and can also be compared to this more global one from CB Insights.
4. CO-WORKING: WeWork (where our SF offices are based) is currently valued at $47 Billion USD - it’s real-estate-as-a-service model has served them well but is it overhyped and overpriced? CB Insights have just published a 47 page report on this leading real estate/tech company.
5. AMAZON: Online sales growth slowed for Amazon according to their recent earnings call, but they still had their biggest quarter on record. Just exactly how big is the business? Well it's almost too big to comprehend - for example just the Cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), generates more revenue than McDonald’s.
6. SaaS SPEND: We’re at SaaStr Annual this week, so expect a deluge of SaaS news next week. But let's start with: How much does the average SaaS Company spend on R&D? Average is 23%. OK - what about Marketing? Tomasz Tunguz has taken a look and even supplied a simple worksheet. Looks like 10% is about right
7. NPS: What is it and why do we measure it? From our amazing Customer, Asknicely, This White Paper reviews common user experience metrics including NPS (Net Promoter Score) and how to measure and calculate this and other very important customer data points.
8. SALES QUOTAS: In past newsletters I have referenced AE and SDR metrics and quotas. But what about quota expectations in renewal and cross sell/upsell within a Customer Success Team? Tomasz Tunguz takes a look based on a report last year from Gainsight. Most Customer Success Managers can handle between $2-$5M in ARR and somewhere between 10-500 accounts (but it varies based on segment/ACMR).
9. FAANG: Apple gave both Google and Facebook a virtual clip around the ears last week by revoking their ability to publish internal and beta/test apps on the iOS platform as they were both found to be abusing Apple requirements for app deployment and data collection. The team at The Information have some interesting insight on where this can all  could go. Apple definitely get to take the higher ground.
10. eSPORTS. This category of entertainment (watching other people play video games) is massive. It boggles my mind. If you are a non-gamer like me, reading this article is helpful to really lean into just how big eSports is and will be.

POD OF THE WEEK: What does it actually take to win at enterprise sales? a16z Podcast covering stories and Lessons in Enterprise Sales

BONUS: Applications for the Y-Combinator Summer 2019 batch are now open and they are also on the hunt for anyone in an emerging filed for an all expenses paid weekend in Boulder, CO in April (from anywhere in the world). 

1. eCOMM: Business Insider's top 5 eCommerce predictions for 2019.
2. CHURN: Uh Oh! Apparently we’ve all been calculating churn rates wrong this whole time. Oh, and if your business has Churn problems, it may very likely be an on-boarding problem.
3. CUSTOMER/PRODUCT: We are currently in the age of the Customer. What exactly does that mean? Well if you are an acquisition focused business versus a customer focused business leveraging customer retention and monetization strategies, probably quite a lot of money. Patrick Campbell of Price Intelligently produced one of the most amazing presentations for me in 2018 with so many solid takeaways it’s hard to summarize but the REALLY big takeaway is on slides 41-44. Monetization and retention-based growth strategies FAR outpace acquisition based ones. Founders should look at this and ask themselves if they want to grow at 15% or 2%?
4. GAMING: Amazon are developing a Game Streaming service joining Microsoft and Google among others, who both have a much larger head start, putting Amazon at a competitive disadvantage (which is unusual for them with Cloud services). This is all indicative of a larger shift in the gaming industry, likely in anticipation of 5G networks coming one-line en-mass in the next 24 months.
5. PRIVACY: Complinace (and lack of of it) can really kill sales cadence when hunting larger customers. Plus it can land you a heft fine if they are in the European Union. Here is a complete guide to GDPR compliance with your data. Plus the fines are real, with Google facing a €50 fine for breaching European privacy rules.
6. Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used to shop
7. SERIES A BENCHMARKS: How well did Series A SaaS companies perform in 2018? My favorite VC analyst, Tomasz Tunguz take a look at Benchmarks for 2018 - couple fo highlights: Median ARR was $1.8m ARR, and growing at 250%!! However 22% of the businesses analyses manage to raise Series A capital with $0 ARR.
8. FAANG: Google is raising prices of it’s G-Suite productivity app 20 percent for the basic and business versions for the first time in a decade. Netflix is also raising it’s subscription price 18%
9. IoT: Adoption is expected to soar over the next few years as non-users expected to begin using IoT solutions. You can also download the full Internet of Things Report (as a PDF) here from Business Insider - NZTE download only. The underlying data can also be downloaded in excel format here. 
10. PRODUCT/MARKET: How does a business differentiate its product in an increasingly crowded market. Openview have provided a guide.

POD OF THE WEEK: How a small startup in Western Australia became one of Australia Unicorn Tech companies. How I built this features Melanie Perkins, founder and CEO of Canva

BONUS: Pitch your hardware project, online, or just join as a listener: StartupBlink are providing an online pitching event for Hardware/IoT founders on Feb 19th