TOP 10 IN TECH
  • Top 10 in Tech
  • Home
  • Work
  • Stuff
  • Medium
Picture


​TOP 10 IN TECH

​a weekly newsletter
Curated SaaS and tech insight from around the web repackaged for people to put to good us

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 30, 2022 - A SAASTR SPECIAL

9/29/2022

 
I just spent the last two weeks binge-watching and listening to SaaStr 2022 sessions - so here are some of the binge highlights:


  1. BUYERS: From the CMO at G2 is a really informative presentation on top takeaways from a survey of more than 1,000 B2B global decision makers and buyers about how we can best engage and compete, given the new post-pandemic shifts and new emerging market trends. I can relate to soooooooo much in this presentation. A standalone deck from this presentation can be downloaded here.
  2. CLOUD 2022: Bessemer Ventures always have a great session every year at SaaStr - they usually present their "State of the Cloud" report, which I reference a lot here. This year was slightly different - they launched the Centaur Report - which is a kinda guide on how to grow to $100M ARR. Watch the whole SaaStr session here.
  3. PREDICTIONS: Phew - Bessemer still did my favorite part of their annual presentation - predictions. Starting at the 12:25 mark. FYI - Cloud is selling more Cloud!
  4. GO TO MARKET: From Mark Roberge at Stage 2 Capital, who gives some PLG context on Go To Market Strategies. It's a really great presentation - I've watched it twice :-). The slide deck from the presentation can be found here.
  5. VENTURE: From the 'Money Day; at SaaStr is The Current State of VC discussion with Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures and Jason Lemkin of SaaStr (both are at the early stage of VC). They (obviously!) also read my newsletter because they dig into the FIGMA acquisition and discuss the new Founder's terror of raising the next round in a market like this - which will be hard.
  6. PLG and SALES: I use Grammarly every day - it's awesome. But they also do something else awesome: They now run with a combo of PLG Motions to grow user base and improve product, but also expanded into Enterprise, so had to forge their own sales org. Check how they did both of these things together from their CEO.
  7. DEVOPS: Similar to #6 above, Chief Revenue Officer Kate Ahlering from Calendly - one of the OG PLG Businesses - talks about PLG Companies adding Sales based orgs into their operations and reveals secrets to revolutionizing Enterprise sales growth and how to make RevOps work for you.
  8. SALES: Customers are way savvier in 2022 than they were 10 years ago - so this session from Reprise and Glasswing Ventures beats the drum of don't Sell SaaS Like It's 2012; customers don't want to buy in that way anymore. Their slide deck is the best part of this session - you can find that here.
  9. SMB: No video for this one, just a deck I thought was a great discovery while browsing the SaaStr SlideShare page. It's a really informative 15 slides: The 7 Secrets of Influencing and Winning Over SMB Technology Decision Makers from Shutri Ghatge and Shannon Murphy of Momentum.
  10. EFFICIENCY: From the always-on-point team at Point Nine: Growth vs. Efficiency: How to Weatherproof Your SaaS startup for Tougher Times. I couldn't find the standalone deck, which dives into a bunch of SaaS Metrics, so if anyone has it - let me know!


POD OF THE WEEK: Bessemer again - State of the Cloud 2022: The Centaur Report With Bessemer Venture Partners (Pod 593 + Video).

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 23, 2022

9/23/2022

 
1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: RULE OF 40: What is the 40% rule for SaaS companies? This video explains more but basically, when a VC-backed SaaS business (of over ~ $2m ARR) adds profit + growth rate, the total should be equal to 40% (or more). This helps calculate the cadence of a business: The faster they grow, the less profitable they need to be. Rule of 40 stocks have outperformed the broader indices, and IT benchmarks over the last 15 years.


2. ROAS vs. ROI: Which Metric Should You Use? First, let's define the differences; Return on ad spend (ROAS) is a metric used to measure the total revenue generated per advertising dollar spent. Return on investment (ROI), as applied to advertising, is the profit generated by the ads relative to the costs of the ads. Read more here on how to use each of the metrics effectively.


3. RENEWALS: Existing customers are the lifeblood of growth in a SaaS business, so making sure they renew is an exercise in revenue efficiency. New customer acquisition costs average about $1.10+ per $1 of ARR. Compare that to the cost of retaining or up-selling existing customers (about 12c-15c per $1ARR) - that's eight times cheaper. So take a peep at this article that lists 5 SaaS Renewal Best Practices and explains how best to calculate renewal rates.


4. BUYERS vs. USERS: The person writing you a check is not necessarily the same person getting value from your business. So read this insightful article from HeavyBit on differentiating messaging based on this premise and the different profiles.


5. HIRING: According to a recent Mulesoft/Salesforce report, 73% of Tech leaders said the current recruitment market is the hardest they've ever experienced for sourcing talent. Most (98%) say their organization suffers from a skills gap due to the "Great Resignation."


6. INFLUENCERS: A couple of years ago, I reported that Influencer marketing spend is projected to hit as high as $15 billion globally by 2022. Guess what? That number is now $16.4B. Why - as much as I don't like to hear this - across multiple forms of media, influencer ads spark a more significant emotional response and stick with users for longer than non-influencer ads.


7. FIGMA: In the newsletter a couple of weeks back, I discussed Figma. Adobe was probably paying attention because they acquired Figma late last week for $20 Billion. Yup, I said Billion, but that's not the most Bonkers metric because that $20 Bil is based on a 50X Multiple. Whoa! Is SaaS cool again? Welllllllll......maybe not.


8. VENTURE: In line with the Figma multiple above, Mark Suster thinks that SaaS companies should not trade at a 24x multiple as they did in November 2021. His perspective is that 10x (May 2022) seems more in line with a new long-term normal.


9. UBER: There was a big-time breach last week, and by big time, I mean all of it. From AWS to Slack and their internal systems. All apparently by an 18-year-old. I don't think we know how actually screwed they are yet.


10. CASE STUDY: Craigslist. If you haven't been on Craigslist for a while, don't worry. It still looks the same. 25+ years of the same-same. Here's why.


POD OF THE WEEK: Learn Fast, don't Fail fast - this is a great podcast covering the Myths about Failure from Greylock Partners (and Reid Hoffman)

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 16, 2022

9/15/2022

 
  1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Cohort Analysis (free Cohort Analysis template!). GoPractice has a Product-focused article on how to forecast key product metrics through cohort analysis. The Startup looks at this metric from a VC Due Diligence perspective.
  2. FIRST PRINCIPLE THINKING: Want to be more like Elon (but without the SEC/Twitter dramas and kids)? Take a read here on the concept of First Principles Thinking. Not gonna lie, I've re-read it for the 10th time this week, and it is a great way to make my brain hurt. Want more? Fine. Here is a complete guide/website. Now that you are an expert on this principle, here is how First Principle Thinking can be applied IRL - in this example, towards a Product Lead Growth business.
  3. NETWORKING: SaaStr Annual is happening this week (more on that in next week's newsletter) - so this one is for all of you attending. Scaling a tech company requires a bunch of know who. But networking (especially at places like SaaStr) is hard regardless of personality type. Here are some great tips from a veteran introvert. Be Curious!
  4. NDR: Net Dollar Retention is an essential metric in the new world of Product Led Growth. It's used to help answer the following: Does my Startup need to increase customer acquisition/marketing spend? Crunchbase has already done the work to calculate what good NDR benchmarks should look like, but this month, Tomasz Tunguz looks at what it takes to achieve 200% NDR!
  5. DUE DILIGENCE: Of the VC kind has gotten harder and longer. So read this article from Allison Weil Lechner at Hyde Park Venture Partners for great insight on what VCs expect when deciding on an investment. FE International has a similar report but written from an acquisitions lens.
  6. SECURITY: According to an upcoming report by Axonius, 66% of IT leaders are concerned their organization is more vulnerable to security risks due to the rise in SaaS application usage. So the big question to you, as a SaaS operator, is; what are you going to do, as part of your sales cycle, to address this concern? They are not wrong - because Phishing attacks abusing SaaS platforms have seen a massive 1,100% growth from June '21 to June '22.
  7. CONTENT: Viewing content as a product was valuable insight for me. As was being told that the strategy of "producing 10 blog posts" is wrong. Take a read of this Two part blog (part 1 and part 2) to change your mindset on what good content should be.
  8. CAPITAL: Hurun released their H1 Global Venture Capitalists report for 2022 earlier this month, along with their Unicorn Index. Very dry-looking reports, so here are the fun facts: 1,312 unicorns were reported globally (valuing $4.1T) and are up 24% since the latter half of '21. 13% of the startups of $500B or more are headquartered in San Francisco, and 71% of the VCs are founded in the U.S. (followed by 21% in China).
  9. PPG: Grab your tech dictionaries, everyone! I have a new acronym for you: PPG or People Powered Growth. This is a derivative of Product-led growth consisting of a cross-functional team with customer- and non-customer-facing members. It's a People + Product partnership that develops and tests solutions searching for ways to scale human interactions/intervention with a product. Some examples of PPG companies are Drift, Dropbox, and Loom.
  10. CASE STUDY: What does Product Market Fit look like? Asking the PMF question IMO is always the more noble focus (as opposed to being focused on answering the question). But sometimes - you just gotta know, and here is a case study on how Superhuman did it.


POD OF THE WEEK: Complimenting #7 above - insight from running a Content Program (or is that Product?) as a one-person team.

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 9, 2022

9/8/2022

 
  1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: PQL vs. Activations. The try-before-you-buy approach to software subscriptions is the best way to get my money. This is pretty much what PLG is, so put away your SQL and MQL metrics for a second and focus on the newer cousin, PQL (Product Qualified Leads). PQLs track potential customers who have exhibited buying intent based on product interest and usage. Now you know that - measuring PQL vs. Activations are the two metrics to measure in unison.
  2. EMPLOYEES: Here is a great question: How many employees should you have based on your ARR? David Sacks has a great slide from his SaaStr presentation on optimal SaaS Org Charts - Series A is 40-50 at 1m ARR. Yup, that's only $20-$25k ARR per employee - full report here which expands into what roles you should hire and what the org chart looks like.
  3. REVENUE PER EMPLOYEE: As an operator, ask the real question to #2 above. What should my annual recurring revenue (ARR) be per employee? Here is the chart in one TL;DR visual, but if you want to read the whole article, you can check it out here and also here (PDF).
  4. OPTIONS and ESOP: Talking of employees...Stock options are necessary for hiring and retaining the best talent in this hyper-competitive StartUp Land, so how can companies build an effective and compelling option plan? During a call not so long ago, I was referred to this great site that has compiled benchmark data, comprising over 20,000 option grants from more than 1,650 startups across the US and Europe sorted by Seed or Venture stage.
  5. HAMBURGER MODEL: A Nom Nom one for the Tech Dictionaries this week. It's a modern go-to-market strategy in this PLG (Product Led Growth) SaaS era. The bottom bun is self-service PLG, and the top bun is enterprise sales. Your product is the meat in the middle. Want an example? Check this week's Case Study on Vimeo - 75% bottom Bun - 25% top bun.
  6. CRYPTO: Massive Crypto event is happening later this month with Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in the metaverse, moving to a proof-of-stake network, which will result in a reduction of carbon emissions by 99%. TL;DR? This update will eliminate the "miners'" function in the Ethereum ecosystem, which significantly lowers network-based power demands.
  7. CAPITAL: Good little nuggets from Carta's State of Private Markets for Q2 '22: The median capital raised in a seed round is $3M, Series A is $9M, and Series B is $20M.
  8. CLOUD: I love the new quarterly cadence of Battery Ventures Cloud reports since they switched from annual starting this year. Take a read of the Q2 '22 version here. It covers a lot in just 42 slides: State of SaaS funding so far, ARR per employee benchmarks, valuations, and even Rule of 40 benchmarks.
  9. DATA STACK: This is a cool one for those on the platform side covering the evolution of the modern data stack, mainly away from ETL (extract, transform, load) to ELT (extract, load, transform).
  10. CASE STUDY: Figma came out of nowhere for me in 2022 to become one of my go-to daily platforms of use. The weird thing is that you have either very much heard of them, or you very much haven't. It's a great study in Community-Led-Product-Led-Growth (I totally just made that term up). First Round Capital has broken Figma's growth down (from stealth to enterprise) into 5 phases.


POD OF THE WEEK: With Yuriy Timen, former Global Head of Marketing and Growth at Grammarly, discusses the ever-changing world of growth, emerging growth tactics, and how to find your growth engine.

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 2, 2022

9/1/2022

 
1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: EARLY STAGE BENCHMARKS - Metrics are only good if you know what to benchmark yourself against, and Chartio has a list of 20 benchmarks for Growing Startups, all handily broken down by department (such as Sales, Marketing, Product, Revenue) to make sure that the business is ready for scale.


2. PRICING SENSITIVITY: I post about pricing a lot (because a 1% increase in price can generate up to an 11% increase in your profits). So this week, let's take a more nuanced approach by looking at priced-based sensitivity - a measure of the percentage of sales you will lose or gain at any particular price point relative to another lower or higher price point. Profitwell can explain it much better - so take a read of their article about how to measure and optimize it (check the Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter")


3. UNSHIPPING: Here is another term for your Tech Dictionaries now that we have all poured one out for Internet Explorer - how can you and your team decide when to unship something? Check here - an excellent article covering this topic from Reforge with evaluation criteria and real-world examples from Slack and Mixpanel.


4. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: Requires outstanding leadership - here is an interview with the Head of Growth at Reddit and the Head of Product at Twitter on how to create a good vision and strategy.


5. VENTURE: This week is a look at Silicon Valley Bank's biannual State of the Markets Report for H1 2022. Tech talent shortages, inflation pressures, and supply chain delays remain serious operational headwinds for startups. On the flip side, there is still an abundance of capital (about $228B in dry powder) - which could fuel growth as long as the money is affordable. SVB forecast Series A deals to break 2,000 (1,526 in 2021). This is in line with observations in the Wilsons Sonsini report discussed last week.


6. DEMO: I love a good demo (who doesn't?), and for me, Demos play a pivotal role in our sales process to demonstrate and discuss the value we can bring. The team at Content Beta analyzed a bunch of Product demo videos (100+) and reported back on places where these videos went wrong, so yours don't have to.


7. BUDGET (PLG): Guess what everyone? It's friggin' September. a) How did that happen? b) It will be EOY before we know it, which means EOFY for many. Time to get next year's budget drafted, circulated, revised, completed, and Board approved! Don't panic. I have an article for you to read to understand better how businesses allocate their resources (based on interviews with over 600 SaaS startups).


8. AI: According to McKinsey, in their Technology Trend Outlook report, businesses spent $165B on artificial intelligence tools last year, up 150% since 2018 ($66B). But according to this Gartner report, only 54% of AI projects make it from pilot to production.


9. DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: Contentsquare has released a pretty extensive Digital Experience Benchmark Report for 2022 (PDF version is here). There are massive amounts of insight here (based on 46+ billion global user sessions). Here are some highlights: Conversion rates increased by 27% YoY, 2.3% average conversion rate, 58% of all web traffic is mobile, and on average, 1 in 2 visitors are returning.


10. CASE STUDY: Everyone loves a good old Pivot story - here are 5: The Hidden Backstory of 5 Startup Pivots That Grew to $43B, including Lyft and Discord.


POD OF THE WEEK: There is always a first. And for this newsletter, it's a link to a Joe Rogan Podcast. He spent over 2 hours with Mark Zuckerberg, who used this podcast to announce the launch of Meta's new virtual reality headset at its Connect conference in October.

      Get YOUR WEEKLY UPDATES!

    Subscribe to the Newsletter for SaaS Operators

    Archives

    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018

  • Top 10 in Tech
  • Home
  • Work
  • Stuff
  • Medium