1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Viral Coefficient: This metric can tell you how many new users a current user is referring to your business. A fantastic way to track low-cost acquisition channels (if this method is your thing). But the coefficient has to be a number greater than 1.
2. SEED VC: Deal size inflation isn’t just happening at the high end of town. It’s also happening over at the seed stage. At seed stage this a pretty substantial cheque - we're talking about $5 million and more to qualify as a “supergiant seed round.” Crunchbase dive deep on this trend over the years - the annual quantity of seed rounds of $5 million or more quadrupled from 2014 to 2018.
3. TECH FOR GOOD: A few years ago, Microsoft tasked me with discovering ways their tech is being leveraged for good around the world, and it sparked a keen interest in me ever since. McKinsey have a great blog called FiveFifty, that lets a reader dive as deep as five or fifty minutes into a topic via by it’s UX design (which is fascinating by itself). This one is on Tech for the Greater Good asking the question "Can advanced technologies such as AI improve the well-being of humans?"
4. HR AT SCALE: When does a high-growth tech company need to hire a Head of HR? It’s generally about 50 people and here is the reasoning why. As an add on, people really do like to do this remote. 
5. DELIGHT AUDIT. Yes, in the Age of the Customer, this should be a thing, so stop rolling your eyes! This is an in-depth post from CopyHackers on how to make this kind of Audit happen.
6. VALUATIONS: Skyrocketing valuations have been a consistent theme in VC in the last few years, but valuation growth has (finally) cooled across the board in the first half of 2019. Check this report from PitchBook which covers Angel through Late-stage VC.
7. PRODUCT LED GROWTH: If you haven’t noticed yet, I keep harping on about this. Want to know how well you are doing at PLG? OpenView have launched a Product Led Growth Maturity Grader  -  this tool is designed to give feedback on how far along your organization is on the PLG maturity spectrum.
8. CLOUD: Public cloud revenue is forecast to reach $500 billion by 2023 and SaaS will remain the largest category of cloud computing, capturing more than half of all public cloud spending and a lot of that SaaS spend will be driven by the API/Micro-Services sub-category of SaaS. It was also Oracle World in SF last week, so it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention Oracles global cloud expansion.
9. RETAIL 3/5: The future of retail is tech-centric and Business Insider are providing a 5 part series on the future of retail (2020 edition) In this Part 3, the focus in on online checkout spotlight the strategies retailers are using to tap into growth.
10. ANTI-TRUST: In this Business Insider report they tale a look at the three most likely outcomes of the impending US regulatory clampdown on big tech and what it means for digital media and from Forbes an article outlining what should be the (consumer based) focus by lawmakers.

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POD OF THE WEEK: It’s a Video, not podcast this week. The content pumping out of Y-Combinator at present is just too good. YC Partner Carolynn Levy details the basics of startup financing and how modern early stage rounds of financing are done using convertible securities, like the SAFE note. 

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK - NDR. Net Dollar Retention is an important metric in the new world of Product Led Growth (SEE #2 BELOW). It’s used to help answer the following: Does my startup need to increase customer acquisition/marketing spend? Tomasz Tunguz writes in detail about this and Crunchbase do the work to calculate what good NDR benchmarks should look like. 
2. PRODUCT LED GROWTH: So hot right now! TL;DR: PLG is when users drive the adoption and proliferation of products out in the wild - my old Alma Mater, Yammer, were one of the pioneers of PLG, modern equivalents are abundant such as Slack, Zoom, Raygun, and Dropbox. Open View just launched their article on what PLG is and I’m re-listing this great guide from User Pilot on how marketing works in a PLG company.
3. FINTECH: Here is the 2019 H1 report from KPMG. It’s been a quiet start for fintech investment globally and Blockchain/crypto technology investment has returned to the levels of 2014-2016 following a two-year hype period.
4. CAPITAL: In the current tech world, it doesn’t have to always be about Venture Capital or equity (and dilution) when looking to finance. Revenue-based financing is quickly becoming a popular way for startups to raise funds without sacrificing equity, with the rise of significant services such as Lighter Capital and The 20-Minute Term Sheet in the past couple or years.  Here is how it works and what these financiers care about. HINT: It’s ARR and growth. From the SaaS CFO here is the Founder’s Guide to Venture Debt with advantages vs disadvantages of Debt vs Equity.
5. UNICORNS: From PitchBook, the 2019 Unicorn club report (so far) - that’s companies valued at over $1billion: At midyear, there were 187 active unicorns in the US which held an aggregate private valuation of just over US$600 billion.
6. ARCHITECTURE: As a recovering tech architect, the (good) internal design of a software system is something I take a deeper interest in than most people. Martin Fowler has a pretty neat comprehensive guide on the (current) different kinds (and why they matter).
7. WHAT IS TECH? Just like asking the question “What is a Salad?", trying to define what a “Tech Company” is can get incredibly complicated, the edges are very blurry. Stratechery discuss this in-depth to make the case why companies such as WeWork, AirBnB, and Uber hit that mark.
8. HUMILITY: I’m awesome at being wrong. It’s almost a second-rate super-power. This article originally came in via Sam Gribben via LinkedIn (thanks Sam) and really caught my attention on the skill sets needed to be a great Product Manager (Hint: It’s humility).
9. RETAIL 1/5: The future of retail is tech-centric and Business Insider are providing a 5 part series on the future of retail (2020 edition) In this Part 1 the focus in on delivery (and how US consumers are expecting same-day).
10. SWAG: The Swag industry is a healthy $23.3B industry (annual) and SaaS swag is everywhere! Which means it must work right? Saleshacker dive into this question and get some pretty interesting results. Initial 26% increase in response rate and a downstream 3x  increase in likelihood to book a meeting, and  a 2.42x increase in opportunity value per prospect in their test groups. SIDE NOTE: You may never have noticed this before but Engineers HATE to be sold to, but LOVE to wear the swag of cool tech.

POD OF THE WEEK:  The latest episode of the EnterpriseReady podcast offers a deep dive into why amazing products start with obsessing about UX, and how great on-boarding experiences can scale successfully.

BONUS: It’s currently StartUp School at Y-Combinator and they release all of their lectures/curriculum out to the wild. This is a great one (warning it’s 30 minutes long) from YC Partner Adora Cheung on how to set KPI’s and Goals. 

In a similar vein to last weeks newsletter. As I spent the latter part of last week in Auckland hosting a Sales Management workshop with the ever-impressive, SaaS sales guru Matt Cameron and the topic is fresh, we’re dedicating this week’s newsletter as a SaaSy Sales-focused special:

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK - ARPU: Average revenue per user (ARPU) is one of the most important measures needed to understand the quality of revenue SaaS companies generate and how that quality can shift over time. This article and Animal:ARPU chart is really informative to help determine how to validate the right-size of customers.
2. ENTERPRISE SALES: Moving upmarket into larger organizations is a pretty standard SaaS growth strategy. Increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per Customer) is good! But there is a lot to learn and a bunch of time required to be successful in this market segment. It's not easy, but it can be done. Here is a great guide from Outreach on breaking into deals over $100k ARR.
3. ENRICH SALES: Want to get better at sales (or get someone else better at sales)? Saleshacker have these 4 fundamental tips to put to work as well as top tips on language to use.
4. SALES COACHING: This is something Matt really hammered home. The best Sales Teams have access to great coaches. Saleshacker cover the fundamentals in this article and Matt Cameron has more to say on it here.  
5. PRICING: From HBR an article on the psychology of pricing (and perceived value).
6. GROWTH: I hear this complaint a lot: Companies are expected (mainly by investors) to start measuring the right things at the wrong stage. In the SaaS world this is compounded as it is such a metric-heavy industry. Without any metrics though, regardless of stage, it’s hard to measure the things you want to improve. So here is advice for everyone (especially early stage investors): Don’t focus on metrics like MRR too early on (but qualified leads - for sure!). And here is how to measure product-market fit (reposted deck from past weeks).
7. COMPENSATION: Compensating SaaS Sales Reps is complicated and expensive. This blog post from Kyle Racki of Proposify is a pretty comprehensive guide from how to set quotas and commissions.
8. SALES ENABLEMENT: What are the best practices for optimizing performance with revenue teams? Sales Hacker have their 5 Do’s and Don’ts for peak results as well as an infographic (BTW 61% of organizations have a dedicated sales enablement person).
9. SDR RAMP: According to past studies, time to ramp for an SDR averages about 3.2 months. From Saleshacker here are some tips and tricks to make this ramp time as effective and successful as possible.
10. SECURITY: Yup - I’m still talking about Sales. Being leaky at the seams is something that can become a real anchor in the sales cycle as SaaS companies start selling into larger (more enterprise) customers. Demonstrating that your team, code, and processes are secure is an important part of the enterprise sales process. Openview have a great overview and HeavyBit are committing an entire event to it in November.

POD OF THE WEEK: Of course this includes Matt Cameron and it’s an expansion on Article #4 above covering his 2 pillars of effective Sales Coaching