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TOP 10 IN TECH
​a weekly tech newsletter
Curated SaaS and tech insight from around the web repackaged for people to put to good use

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 24, 2020

4/24/2020

 
  1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: NRG - Natural Rate of Growth. Now that I’ve convinced everyone subscribed to this newsletter to go all-in with Product Lead Growth, it’s time to reference the metric you need to know. It requires us to get halfway through this article before that becomes clear. But hey - it’s totally worth the scroll. With NRG the assumption is that a PLG business has an organic, self-service growth engine at their core (because they’re built to attract the end-user). The article comes complete with benchmarks towards the bottom. Hungry for more PLG metrics? I got ya!
  2. FUTURE (both links from McKinsey): The future is here and it’s not what we thought it would be (where are my flying cars for example?!) - it’s going to be a distant, resilient, efficient, contactless but opportunist place and here is how we might come out the tail end 
  3. AR/VR: In a less-than-ideal moment for the AR-VR industry, the mysterious and hyped AR company Magic Leap, who’s raised $2 billion in funding over the past 10 years,  laid off over 1000 employees (over half) and announced its abandoning it’s consumer headset focus. This doesn't appear to be Covid related, as The Information discussed this back in December and reportedly also discussing a sale.
  4. MARKETING: OK, there are plenty of people with ideas of how to market during a pandemic, but what exactly IS the impact of Covid-19 to Sales and Marketing Performance? The trusted team at HubSpot are tracking this all in real time. What you need to know: New deals dropped in March across all regions; webiste traffic increased; as did customer-initiated conversations. Thats some great insight about where to focus efforts! In summary - Shift campaigns tp rapidly mirror users ever evolving behaviors.
  5. MEASURE: What Hub Spot say above is important but how do you also measure your own marketing efforts in this time of upheaval? Google have some do’s and don’ts for marketing measurement during a pandemic.
  6. WEBSITE: Now we know that website traffic should be increasing during a lockdown (see #4 above), here are some ways you can supercharge your website using research.
  7. GROWTH MARKETING: Julian Shapiro has a REALLY great primer on growth marketing (warning it is a very deep dive) for B2B and B2C marketers. 
  8. PRODUCT LEAD GROWTH: You may have heard me talk about this category from time to time (today). But here is a sub-sub-category term for you: Product-Led Storytelling. PLG isn’t for everyone, some people, like the author of this article call it hype, but probably so he can hammer home his agenda/story: That Product-Led Storytelling is way cooler. 
  9. SALES: PandaDoc has just releases some pretty great data-based content marketing - the State of Deals 2020 Report. In this report they take a deep look at the relationship between buyers and sellers, as well as the sales process itself. Highlighting interesting facts such as the process is likely more important than the people, and that many deals are just to cumbersome and difficult to close.
  10. GLOBAL VC: I now know what dog-years actually mean (to a dog), January 2020 seems like 28 months ago to me, where it was simply just the start to Q1 2020. Crunchbase review Q1 2020 from a global VC perspective and paints a bit of a bleak Q: Lowest number of rounds in 5 years, lowest dollar volume in two years, and a proportional decrease of spend globally outside of the hot spots of US and Canada.

BONUS: Want to become an Angel Investor? Here is a 3 hours course form Angel.Univeristy coming up on May 11th. 

POD OF THE WEEK: This is actually a webinar to compliment #4 - Hubspot's presentation on how COVID-19 Is Impacting Sales and Marketing Performance

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 17, 2020

4/17/2020

 
  1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: ESOP: Not yet figured out your employee stock ownership plan? Well it’s a great incentive mechanism to retain and motivate top staff. Check this cheat sheet or here’s a video version if you prefer to watch it. Obviously working out the dilution factor of an ESOP is an important metric to know - so check this page for more on that.
  2. MOTIVATION: In our newly minted WFH environments, motivation/distractions are evident and abundant. Good habits are a key component to WFH productivity - PWC (via their snazzy Medium page) have some great insights on how to develop good habits. If you are a CEO/Exec also check this article built from your perspective.
  3. MARKETING: So in this uncertain environment, where people are actively wondering if they are just the band playing on the Titanic, SparkToro admits that marketing is #$%*ing hard right now and  CXL take a look back at the financial crisis of the 2000’s as a comparison. Google also have some online courses to elevate your digital marketing skills and Business Insider have a deep report on AI in Content Marketing
  4. ONBOARDING: Just like pricing, product onboarding is never perfect and is always a bunch of hypothesis competing to be the most successful. User Pilot have 3 product experiments to try that can reduce churn
  5. WFH ETIQUETTE: Do everyone a favor and read these articles: The Information on Zoom Etiquette  (TL;DR - please, wear pants) and here is a run down of how to onboard WFH SDR’s and AE's
  6. DOWN ROUND: As the possibility of a 2020 down-round grows for startups and tech companies, this becomes an important clause to understand in your term sheets. Read this for a full understanding of how a ratchet mechanism can work.
  7. EMAIL MARKETING: From Salesforce is actually a pretty darn helpful best-practices guide to all things email marketing related (focusing on getting your data ducks in a row) - PDF for your downloading pleasure.
  8. CONTACT TRACING: We’re all going to hear this phrase a LOT in the upcoming months. The technique has been around for a while, but Apple and Google are launching a joint venture to deploy contract tracing functionality across Android and iOS devices globally - so here is a really helpful primer on Contact Tracing and the solution being implemented by Gapple/Appoogle.
  9. VENTURE: The new Venture Monitor report for Q1 2020 from Silicon Valley Bank is out. It was a strong start to US VC in Q1 2020 but, in a big surprise to no-one,  there will likely be a significant slowdown of venture activity for the rest of 2020.
  10. REMOTE SELLING: Hopefully after #5 above, you are fully prepped for onboarding remote AE’s and SDR’s ;-). But how do they sell remotely both tactically and strategically? Hunt Club has some suggestions.

POD OF THE WEEK: To compliment #10 above, here is the webinar replay of the Remote Selling presentation (with Aaron Ross of Predictable revenue) 

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

4/10/2020

 
  1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: ARPA, or Average Revenue Per Account (not annual) is the measure of the revenue generated per account, which can be measured per year or per month. Really helpful identifying which segments, products are high value. Buffer provide excellent commentary on how they grew to $20m ARR by being hyper-focused on ARPA
  2. CUSTOMER REFERENCE. Last week I referenced/suggested putting some effort and focus on Churn and optimizing ways to keep that number low. Let's take it a step further this week by leveraging those frothiest of customers into a referral channel. Here is a playbook from SaaStr.
  3. SLACK vs TEAMS: TL;DR both platforms are growing like crazy, one more so. Ok, I'm a Mac guy and I’m also a Slack guy, so I’m also biased. But these days pretty much everyone WFH is using either Slack or Microsoft Teams as their collaboration platform de jour. Last weeks #8 got quite a few reads and reactions regarding Slacks crazy week and this week Go Practice take a look at their astonishing recent growth and soberingly compares it to the growth of Microsoft Teams - there is a huge delta in Teams’ favor, even when ignoring the fact that any Office Microsoft 365 users get Teams by default. When you look at DAU - it’s significant too.
  4. BUSINESS MODEL: This is a pretty long, but very high value, read from Alex Jarvis with real life examples and some good humor. The business model is always more important than the product (but they both matter), as does timing. There is a longer PDF version - so I got that for ya too (it’s longer).
  5. PLG: Yeah you know me. In this Covid-19 world PLG is becoming more viable as a go-to-market strategy for more businesses. Here are a couple of good PLG-first articles - this one is from Profitwell, and a PLG Virtual Summit is happening on April 15th. 
  6. PRICING: It’s a hypothesis, as pricing will never be perfect. Chargify provides 5 pricing scenarios a SaaS company can test. Intercom make the case that a solid pricing strategy helps shape an entire business model
  7. CASH: Is king, and that statement has never been more important for a startup that right now. MYOB have some good advice on cash flow management in a Covid-19 world and SaaS academy have solid recommendations on how to preserve your runway
  8. EVENTS: We’re all going virtual, so Google has a pretty comprehensive guide and how to pivot live events to virtual gatherings.
  9. RECRUITING: Wondering how best to recruit remotely? Forbes has some recommendations for you  and Recruitee has 7 hiring tips. 
  10. VALUATIONS: Data is starting to trickle in how COVID-19 will impact valuations. Check The Startup’s Work and Tom Tunguz takes a swing at what sectors will be most impacted.

POD OF THE WEEK: WFH life for Customer Success teams - the CEO of ChurnZero has a perspective on how to build this function remotely.

BONUS: I'm now fully registered and attending the (pivot) SaaStr Virtual Summit: Bridging the Gap on April 22. You can too: https://register.saastrsummit.com.

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 3, 2020

4/3/2020

 
  1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: DAU/MAU. The DAU/MAU ratio is a popular metric for companies who need to measure user engagement. Rule of thumb: Apps over 20% = good, if you have 50%+  - you’re world-class.
  2. INNOVATION: So what technological changes will this global crisis accelerate? Tomasz Tunguz asking the right questions this week with the obvious ones: Automation, Telecommuting/videoconference and Telemedicine all likely big winners. But what about eCommerce, Entertainment Streaming services, Education, and Gaming? In a surprise to no-one in this hygiene-focused era though is the rise of contactless.
  3. STARTUPS: It may not be ideal conditions to run a high growth tech company, startup, or scale up or right now - but Founder Institute makes the argument that it’s a great time to start one - all good points made. John Chambers goes one step further proclaiming that this era is when legends will be born.
  4. NOW WHAT?: It’s been a tough one gathering this week’s top 10 as headlines are basically 100% coronavirus related, 100% of the time. But trust good old Matt Cameron to be the pragmatic one with some sound advice for SaaS companies this week. Also - next three in the list (#4, #5 & #6 below are places to focus on while we all WFH)
  5. WHY: Many of us are sadly exploring the reality of how to save a business where customers, channels, or revenues have severely dipped or totally disappeared. So go check James Carter from process.st who suggesting you ask Why in 5 distinct ways to potentially save your business. 
  6. RETENTION: You also have to be very focused on keeping what you have in this in this time of global crisis. Userpilot has 5 tactics for SaaS customer retention strategies in these most unique times.
  7. CONTENT STRATEGY: It's a great time to get writing everybody (I need to drink my own cool-aid here) - CopyBlogger give some tips on how to create content that resonates. Great complimentary user story for this on how Leadfeeder used Content marketing to increase their monthly signups.
  8. SLACK: This is a fascinating real-life story of a week in the life (last week!) of Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, via a Tweet storm - this was a week consisting of not just an earnings call AND a total new Covid-19 world where Slack offices went virtual, but one where Stock prices went bananas, and demand for the Slack product went off the charts.
  9. BIG TECH BOOST: Facebook and Google are offering their own stimulus packages via advertising credits and grants for small businesses globally ($100m and $340m respectively). Check them out, I did- fingers crossed we all get the big-tech hookup.
  10. IMPOSTER: Imposter Syndrome is real (trust me) and UXDesign has some tips on how to make the feeling go away. Y-Combinator also has a rabbit hole of a discussion thread on their site.

POD OF THE WEEK: From #10 above - a complementary podcast on overcoming imposter syndrome from saleshacker

BONUS: SaaStr has pivoted a little and bringing us the SaaStr Summit later this month - whoop whoop.  

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