1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Renewal and Up-sell Rates. in SaaS you need to understand more than the headline ARR metric; you need to understand the layers of recurring revenue and also the health of that recurring revenue.
2. SALES: A lot of it is a management problem. Given the high turnover rate of productive sales reps (average tenure is currently under 1.5 years), optimizing their time is key for optimizing their value. Chartmogul covers the ways good management can help optimize value and minimize, or automate, the mundane.
3. MARKETING: Marketing is a practice covering many different disciplines and specialties.  Which one should a startup hire first?
4. CAPITAL: First Round Capital have a sound article centered on the much-needed strategic approach to raising capital, with MondayNote looking at the five mistakes entrepreneurs make misunderstanding VCs.
5. SEGMENTATION: Great article on how Segmentation can be combined with LTV (Life Time Value) to grow MRR (from a subscription box startup).
6. EMAIL: When it comes to outbound marketing, email still works really well! Digital Olympus has a great guide on effective email outreach. (HINT: This takes time and effort!)
7. SCRUM: Agile methodology is a modern software development process that encourages flexibility. It's an umbrella term for multiple management frameworks on how to get things done. Scrum is one of those frameworks and AngelList provide a primer on Scrum based techniques.https://angel.co/blog/agile-methodology-a-primer-on-moving-fast
8. CUSTOMER SUCCESS: A pretty succinct article from ChartMogul on what and how to get started with your customer success efforts - especially as a remote team.
9. PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: A lot of SaaS businesses require flat fee based Implementation and deployment cost charges, often captured as revenue from Professional Services. This naturally increases with customer size (and complexity) capping out as an average of 11% of all revenue at Enterprise size customers.
10. SCALE: Salesforce is currently the only $100B ARR pure SaaS company - Jason Lemkin says there are many more coming and asks the question of what would it takes for a business to reach this kind fo scale. Great nuggets in this article of how companies like Salesforce sell to their customers.

POD OF THE WEEK: Many technical founders believe that great products and ideas sell themselves, without any extra effort or marketing. But in reality, they often need public relations (PR). A16z explore how brand-building really works in this Podcast.

BONUS: RayGun’s Tech Leader Events have been a great success in NZ and they are now taking them tooth US (Seattle and Portland in early December). The Portland one will be live-streamed too so check them out online or in-person. 

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Beyond Customer Satisfaction Surveys or Net Promoter Scores is this idea of a Customer Engagement Score. This is a useful tool for managing a companies customer base, making segment decisions easy, therefore enabling different, priorities and engagement strategies -  and being able to measure the impact of those strategies over time. Get started reading this article.
2. PE vs VC: Private Equity is very different than Venture Capital and there are fundamental shifts happening in capital markets that are likely to drive a long-term trend toward much larger PE opportunities vs. traditional public equity models. Private Equity fundraising in the US hit an all time high this month - $246 billion year-to-date. Crunchbase break down the differences between both VC and PE.
3. PRICING: It’s never right as it has to evolve (and we are all not charging enough). Intercom make the case that a solid pricing strategy helps shape an entire business model
4. SALES: Selling success depends on the lens of the buyer - who have never been more in control (and increasingly indifferent to sellers). In B2B it also often involves a Team. CSO Insights commissioned a research recently into the current state of B2B sales, the emerging opportunities for B2B sellers, and the best practices and solutions - download it here.
5. MLP: (thats 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.
6. BURNOUT: This personal story from a co-founder of Buffer is something that all founders should read - and what can happen (and 4 steps you can actively take to prevent it).
7. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION: CI is a process that dev teams use to iterate and ship software quickly, it can easily be confused with Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery - but they are not the same. This article from Angel.co helps clarify the differences and makes the case why CI is the optimal dev strategy for great customer experiences.
8. SECURITY: To expand on above - as CI becomes widely adopted, security needs to be rolled up into the process as well - 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).
9. GROWTH: This article is really great, using well known tech company examples. From Paddle, each software product has 3 times the competition they have 3 years ago, so how to optimize growth in this competitive $600 billion industry? 
10. TRANSPORTATION: I now have an Alexa Auto in my car (after firing Siri) and Big tech is investing big into transportation - from Business Insider this report covers the big 3 (Amazon, Apple, and Google) and their efforts in the sector so far, identifying some opportunties outside of the big ones for tech companies.

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POD OF THE WEEK: From This Week in Startups - HubSpot CEO on his insights on inbound Marketing.
BONUS: Need to raise a bunch of money? LinkedIn learning have a great course covering the fundamentals of raising startup capital. 

David Skok is a legend in the SaaS world and we have written about his work extensively in the past, as well as convincing him to speak at our events. His annual report in partnership with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) is out and I’m dedicating this weeks newsletter to 10 top nuggets from this report! PDF links to the full report here - great benchmarks for any SaaS business. This may be part 1 of 2 part series as there is so much great insight in this report.
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1. GROWTH: Median organic ARR growth for the year surveyed (2018) was 36%. Thus is across 424 SaaS businesses distributed globally (but 2/3 of which were US domiciled). This rate is pretty evenly split across different contract size businesses - so there is no obvious relationship between ACV and growth. Companies surveyed average median ARR of $8.7m 
2. CAC: This one needs nuance, so the report has broken it down into blended, new, up-sell, and expansion. Median blended is every $1 of ARR generated costs $1.14. Net new is almost double ($1.34) of up-sell ($0.78) and 3x expansion (sitting at a neat $0.50). This chart alone highlights why having a customer focused strategy is critical for growth. 
3. CAC PAYBACK: This one is a little painful. Blended CAC payback period is 17 months and net new median is 20months. This really highlights the deep relationship to Capital to fuel a SaaS companies growth.
4. CUSTOMERS: 2/3rds of revenue come from designated customer base and companies who focused on SMB-Mid grew modestly faster than other groups (but business size is not indicative of a similar relationship to ACV.
5. CAPITAL EFFICIENCY: How much ARR can each full time employee absorb in an efficient SaaS business? The overall median is $110k ARR per FTE. For early stage businesses (those with under $5m ARR) that number is higher at $139k.
6. CROSS SELL/UPSELL: 37% of new ARR bookings is attributable to cross sell/up-sell activities. Larger companies use this strategy more heavily than their smaller counterparts (2x more). This is likely due to not being so reliant on new acquisition focused as the business matures.
7. GO TO MARKET: The primary mode of Sales and Marketing efforts remains Field Sales based, with Inside Sales taking a very close second strategy for smaller businesses (under $10m ARR). Now what is interesting in this part of the report is that those companies with a mixed source of sales (both inbound and outbound) had a remarkably larger rate of organic growth - 50% compared to 36% for Inside Sales and 33% for Field.
8. CHURN: This is related to Go To Market above - Businesses primarily focused on Field-based Sales experience, on average, lower churn and higher net dollar retention (CAC remains unchanged).
9. SPEND: Figuring out how to optimize marketing spend and growth rate is a key question and this study doesn’t show great benchmarks - percentage of revenue in pretty much equals percentage growth out, but with an ever increasing range of outcomes as spend increases per business. More solid benchmarks are with the Sales vs Marketing spend ratios which stay at about 2:1 regardless of market-facing strategies (although Mixed is a bit of an outlier).
10. COMMISSION: Commission levels of sales are pretty stable across sale types at about 10-14%. Commissions on renewals is only 3% and upsell is 9% - however about 50% of the time this is not paid at all. (Bringing up another subject on how much revenue a Customer Service Manager can manage).

POD OF THE WEEK: Consumer is way ahead of enterprise so far with AI applications a16z take a look this week at AI in B2B.

BONUS: Pitch perfect takes practice. Startup Blink offers online pitch practice weekly - you just have to do it 6pm or 9pm Greenwich Meantime. 

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: TAM (Total Addressable Market). This is the metric founders are commonly asked for that is designed to give a sense of the size of the prize for a business. It helps convince investors that a founder is chasing a venture-scale sized opportunity. It’s also a metric that in my opinion most get incredibly wrong. Look for Bottom Up our Value based sizings. It is unrealistic for a company to capture the entirety of a TAM with their business or product, so building a narrative around what (within that TAM) is obtainable sets great expectations (and shows a deep understanding of the market) - called TAM-TOM-SOM. Here are some great examples of TAM
2. RETAIL 5/5: 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 final part of the series it covers the big Elephant in the eCommerce room- Amazon. 
3. MICRO VC’s: Here is a master list of sub $100m USD VC funds! 
4. CADENCE: I bang this drum fairly regularly Top tech companies are top performers in-part due to the fact that they operate at a cadence that is faster than most. It’s all about execution and heartbeat, which requires a fierce focus and prioritization. First Round Capital also have their take on speed.
5. ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE: Great article from Capiche on how SaaS has revolutionized the idea of enterprise software via a well-worn “Bottoms up” model (SMB -> Mid -> Enterprise growth strategies). This Consumerization of business software is demonstrated by a recent study by Okta, who showed that the number of apps in use has increased by 68% for large companies and 43% for small and mid-size companies since 2015.
6. PLG: Product Led Growth is a strategy in use by many successful SaaS companies for years. I’ve referenced it plenty in past newsletters. From ChartMogul here is the PLG Sales best practices to compliment the marketing Cheat Sheet I referenced in a recent newsletter. Also don't forget that 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.
7. CYBERSECURITY: Threats are on the rise, as is the adoption rates of apps and products within large organizations. It’s a perfect storm of real risk that needs solid, strategic approaches to management. This article from McKinsey offers a risk-based approach to managing overall modern-day cyberrisk exposure.
8. SOCIAL MEDIA: It’s modern-day maturity is reflected in its domination by just a handful of companies (who are under some pretty hard scrutiny at present and saying ludicrously lofty things). The Information focus this article on a number of neo-social-networking startups (I totally just made that term up) that have emerged on the scene hoping to gain traction by focusing on how young people like to communicate.
9. NETWORKING: Relationships are a major currency in the tech world, and learning to network like a local in the Valley requires practice and determination. First Round Capital have a great article on best practices, of course, we do too.
10. IoT: Current and future IoT applications are a major driver of cloud computing and so it’s no surprise that Microsoft announced last week that they will pour $5 billion into IoT over the next 4 years, all on top of Azure and here is their current summary of IoT based research.

POD OF THE WEEK: Adding into number 5 above - a podcast story on moving upmarket as a SaaS business
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BONUS: Sian and the Kiwi Landing Pad have scored an absolute legend for their webinar next week - Jason Lemkin of SaaStr.  

From Guest Curator: Joss Honour, Global Practice Lead - Digital Commerce @ NZTE. This week’s newsletter is dedicated to Digital Commerce, one of NZTE's new Practice Areas:
 
I am writing this as I prepare for a trip to the US which I started planning around attending the B2B Online conference in Miami, Florida – a leading event for Manufacturers and Distributors growing with digital commerce. I hope this Top 10 special brings you some insights you find useful in your customer conversations around digital commerce.
 

1. FIRST, THE BIG PICTURE: NZTE’s Board and Lead Team came together on 22 October to hold a Beyond Disruption workshop. Two favourite takeouts from the session were that we need to “wallow in the misery of not knowing” and “plan for more than one future”. This article from MIT supports this by noting that today’s leaders must be “sensemakers”.
2. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?: Absolunet in its summary of trends for 2019 says “How we interact, discover and purchase goods (as well as return them) is now a 24/7 cycle. And not just in retail, but in B2B as well, where eCommerce integration has become priority #1. Customer journeys now merge online and in-store. The notion that eCommerce is a distinct store or activity is disappearing…”
3. WHAT DO WE NEED TO KNOW? Every business is a digital business and here’s what not to do if you want to be successful!
4. DOES IT APPLY TO YOUR BUSINESS? Statista valued B2C eCommerceat US$2 trillion in 2019 and B2B eCommerce at US$12.2 trillion (China, Japan, South Korea and the US lead in B2B).  It may not be your first thought, but if you are targeting those markets, considering those numbers, it’s worth considering.
5. WHO RULES THE WORLD? Business Insider Intelligence and Attest research shows almost half of Millennials and Gen Xers use Smartphone apps and browsers to make purchases. With these age groups being the core income earning groups at present, it’s essential that your online offer via Mobile is slick and easy to use.
6. HOW DO I KNOW WHAT THEY WANT? Zendesk is a scalable customer service and engagement platform. It just released its findings on the five biggest gaps in customer experience for medium-sized companies.
7. RESOURCING: Once you get started, a question that comes up quickly is how to resource your digital commerce team. Scalefast outlines an ideal scenario to aim for over 1-3 year timeframe.
8. IMPACTS ON SALES TEAMS: Different types of businesses will require different digital strategies based on the end-users and their decision-making process. Gartner shows how the B2B sales journey is not linear and has changed in this report.
9. I’VE STARTED ON THE JOURNEY, WHAT NEXT? There is a lot to understand about digital commerce and sometimes it’s easier to learn by doing. Try out the Ecommerce Wiki – here’s a link to everything Mobile Commerce as a starter.
10. WHAT’S THE NUMBER ONE TOP TIP? Businesses with proven online success have emphasised the importance of spending time to create your key customer personas. Conversion XL writes that when based on data and research, decision making to appeal to your ideal customers will be easier.

POD OF THE WEEK: On a lighter note, for anyone spending inordinate amounts of time on the internet (like me): James Veitch on handling spam email.