HAPPY HOLIDAYS! It's the last newsletter of this insane year and the perfect opportunity for a retrospective on the most clicked links (by you!) for the year. 2020 hindsight has quite a different meaning these days. . Thanks for your readership and see ya next year.

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE YEAR - 1 of 2: Product-Market-Fit. Wait it’s a metric? According to Jeff Chang - you betcha: The best metric for determining quantitative product market fit; SaaS METRIC OF THE YEAR - 2 of 2: All of it! ChartMogul have compiled their (“ultimate") SaaS Metrics Cheat Sheet 
2. GO TO MARKET METRICS: Current and pragmatic Go-To-Market benchmarks are presented in this deck from Tomasz Tunguz and the team at Redpoint Ventures. Some good findings from their survey: 1) If SDR/BDR teams hit their numbers, so do Account Executives; 2) Most sales teams ramp Account Executives in about six months; 3) Marketing teams spend 5-10% of a companies ARR.
3. BURNOUT: Anecdotally I feel like I have had more conversations about burnout in this year than ever. I’m glad people are talking about it, but it’s also very much a sign of the times. Check this very personal article from the CEO of Subbly on how he he recognized and managed his own burnout. Great lessons in here for everyone.
4. REMOTE: Nearly all of us are working remotely or WFH. The big tech players in Silicon Valley (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc) are all doing it too and not really looking back too much. So take read of this article from Inc. Magazine (and rip it off): 9 great tips from Googles Remote Work Policy. Ars Technica expand beyond policy and dive into both technical and cultural changes in this article.
5. MARKETING: A SaaS 101 primer.  From the team at SaaStock is 1) a 20-page PDF guide to SaaS Marketing and 2) pulled from their last (non-virtual) conference are 4 of their top marketing Sessions.
6. PITCH DECKS: The self-proclaimed Worlds Largest Pitch Deck creation! Why recreate the pitch-wheel? Alexander Jarvis has compiled a monster collection (139) of funded pitch decks here (including AirBnB, LinkedIn, Intercom, Transferwise, Canva, and Sendgrid).
7. CHURN: This is real simple (but cringey-because-we-can-relate) list of things to do in order for your customers to hate you.
8. CAPITAL: Jason Lemkin lists 11 signs a VC can use to to predict if a venture investment will work out and 10 further hacks to have happier investors.
9. SALES: A great primer on SaaS Sales from our friends at Lighter Capital. Sales cycles, commission rates, models, and metrics all explained (with best practices).
10. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Customer loyalty drives the success of a business, and the customer experience (CX) drives loyalty. Zen Desk has published their CX Trends Report for 2020 and it's full of great nuggets: 74% of customers feel loyal to a particular brand or company and 52% of customers report going out of their way to buy from their favorite brands.

POD OF THE YEAR: Trello (now part of Atlassian) is well beyond 50,000,000 users. Check this vid-cast from Jason Lemkin and SaaStr on the founders top learnings on getting there.

We're going to make this weeks newsletter a customer-focused edition:

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: LTV/CAC. The ratio of a customer lifetime value (LTV) versus costs associated to acquire that customer (CAC) is one of the primary metrics that companies use to measure efficiency. Many think the higher the better - but 3 is actually the magic number, if it's higher, you are more than likely leaving customer money on the table - but this article is interesting as it gives 4 reasons (from an advertising lens) as to why LTV/CAC is not a great metric for early startups (and what to use instead). HINT: It’s totally payback period…...
2. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Customer loyalty drives the success of a business, and the customer experience (CX) drives loyalty. Zen Desk has published their CX Trends Report for 2020 and it's full of great nuggets: 74% of customers feel loyal to a particular brand or company and 52% of customers report going out of their way to buy from their favorite brands.
3. CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS:   When it comes to trust, people trust people over brands. Chart Mogul has posted an 'Ultimate' Guide to Using Customer Testimonials to Boost Sales, noting that a generic and insincere endorsement is just as helpful as not using anything. It's also possible to take it a step further  by leveraging those frothiest of customers into a referral channel. Here is a playbook from SaaStr on how to make that happen.
4. CUSTOMER CASE STUDIES: Latching onto #3 above, beyond testimonials, case studies are super valuable at early-stages as a company needs to demonstrate to the market not just their credibility but both the business value and the technical context of the product. Heavy Bit has a great guide on how to craft that first customer case study and Uplift provides 6 best practices to be using in your story.
5. CUSTOMER SERVICE:  In this current age of the customer, enhanced by COVID,  SaaSx makesthe argument that Customer Success is actually the product. Want to start building out that product? Check the HubSpot guide on getting started with your customer team.
6. CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION: In order to calculate the cost for Customer Service Managers, it’s best to segment customers out in order to understand the efforts required. Chartmogul has this great visual and once again Gainsight take a look at how to Benchmark efforts over segmentation. Here is what they found. The median amount of ARR that an Enterprise CSM can manage is between $2M and $5M and The median amount of customers an Enterprise CSM manages is 10-50 - these revenue figures drop with mid and SMB customer segments and increase fairly dramatically with number of customers per CSM.
7. CUSTOMER PERSONAS: SaaS B2B Marketing is a pretty unique beast - and getting into the minds of an idealized customer often requires going through the practice of creating personas - you should try it - it will def make you a better SaaS marketer. For most SaaS companies creating multiple personas is often a strategic necessity. So here is an additional differentiator (and what the difference is compared to a persona) of an Ideal customer profile.
8. CUSTOMER DATA: Customer data management is a practice, not a technology. I love that simple message. Bluconic give the crib notes/5-steps in this article about how to develop a strategy to optimize and improve customer experience using good data management practices.
9. CUSTOMER ONBOARDING: Onboarding success is often de-prioritized with scrappy fast-growing business but giving customers all the tools they need to succeed with your product is the best way to ensure that they stick around. Profitwell review the importance of good SaaS onboarding and discuss steps to create an awesome program. Userpilot also have a great tactical complimentary post here on the best customer onboarding software options for SaaS companies.
10. CUSTOMER DELIGHT AUDIT. Its the Age of the Customer you know, so this needs to  be a thing - here is an in-depth post from CopyHackers on how to make this kind of Audit happen and here is a case study on how 3 big Tech companies (GitLab, HubSpot and Zoom) make delight happen. Also here is a Case Study on building a customer centric B2B organization from McKinsey.

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

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).
2. GROWTH: A strong follow from above - I hear this complaint a lot, and it seems to be (anecdotally) increasing: Companies are expected by investors/shareholders to measure the right things at the wrong stage. The SaaS world is such a metric-heavy industry - we want to measure the things we 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.
3. QUOTA 1/2: Hands up if you're forecasting or re-forecasting for 2021! Compensating SaaS Sales Reps is complicated and expensive. This blog post from Kyle Racki of Proposify has a pretty comprehensive guide from how to set quotas and commissions. But here is a quick shortcut to make it easy for all you Account Executives: The average annual quota in this report from David Skok and Co was found to be $770K in ACV and on average, the quota was found to be 5.3X OTE. An expanded top10inTech teardown of that report (which admittedly is from 2017 so starting to get a bit long in the tooth) can be found here.
4. FORECASTS: Outside of setting quotas, running a SaaS business has a primary reliance on cashflow - so it is imperative to forecast future revenue to avoid a cash crunch when trying to scale. So check this article covering Sales Forecasts and Pipeline Reviews: Why and How from a cash perspective
5. SALES ENABLEMENT: Now that quotas are sorted thanks to #3 and #4 above: 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).
6. 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.
7. QUOTA 2/2: Thought provoking article from #3, #4 and #5 above. Your Sales Team has a Sales Quota. Your Marketing team has to have a quota too. as they are also part of your revenue team. Getting both sales and marketing teams aligned beyond quota though is a real trick and Tomasz Tunguz has a quick diagnostic to determine if your sales and marketing teams are working well together.
8. SPEED: First Round Capital always a take on speed. This is because top tech companies are top performers and market differentiators 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. 
9. SECURITY: There is an ever-increasing value seen in good security practices when investors evaluate startups. Especially when evaluating mid-market and (especially) enterprise targeted tech. Here are a couple of great articles from HeavyBit discussing this in detail - from what investors are looking for in a team's response to security to how to pass those awkward, sales-friction-inducing, Enterprise Security Reviews….and also how to get started.
10. MOBILE: AppAnnie has compiled 5 key (data informed) post-COVID trends you need to know about mobile for 2021: TikTok is forecast 1.2 BILLION (yes billion)MAU for next year. Thats bonkers! Also "Couch commerce" is the new phrase I cant get enough of now that being more at home is the new normal.

POD OF THE WEEK: Reid Hoffman pretty much talks about everything in this podcast (he already talks at 1.5 speed, so keep the speed settings at normal on your Pod App): Starting LinkedIn, investing in Airbnb, passing on Stripe, the different styles of Leaders, how to think through price in Venture, the power of a learning mindsets, etc, etc...

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: NRG - Natural Rate of Growth. This is for all you Product Lead Growth groupies. With NRG the assumption is that a PLG business has an organic, self-service, growth engine at the core (because they’re built to attract the end-user). The article linked above comes complete with benchmarks towards the end. Hungry for more PLG metrics? I got ya!
2. PRODUCT LED GROWTH (PLG): Nice little lead-in from above, Lemme tech-splain you: PLG is a go-to-market strategy that relies on using the product as the main vehicle for growth (eg Slack, Evernote, Netflix, and Dropbox). PLG gives the user access to the product, driving their experience to meaningful outcome where upgrading to a paid plan just  becomes a no-brainer. It can become a true growth fly-wheel if built right.
3. TRIALS: Are a proven method for a solid PLG  go-to-market strategy. Check this article on 9 ways to optimize your SaaS trial and then take note from Tomasz Tunguz on how long should your customer trial period be?: TL;DR: Longer trials do not convert customers at greater rates
4. CUSTOMER SUCCESS: Take a (deep) read of this extensive guide for building great customer success teams - CS is not just about limiting churn, but it also creates a department and practice to convince existing customers to buy even more from you. As Jason Lemkin said back in 2015: "Customer Success is where 90% of the revenue is”. Want a working example? Chart Mogul expand on this and explain their approach to a (successful) success management strategy.
5. MARKETING SPEND: Last week I mentioned Sales Budgets - Figuring out how to optimize marketing spend and growth rate is also 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).
6. PROSPECTING: A lot of startups follow this path: Get an idea, build an MVP, convince friends and family to validate as beta customers. Then........OK - now what? This is ideally when prospecting needs to start - so take a read here of  the beginner’s guide to B2B prospecting.
7. GROWTH (Bootstrapped): I love myself a good and fully transparent, with warts and all, SaaS growth story. So this one is a great beginning to end account: Growing a SaaS from Zero To Sold - BOOTSTRAPPED. On the flip side of that bootstrap world are the unavoidable and hard pitfalls of trying to grow a startup without any external capital: 6 things I wish I knew before I bootstrapped my first SaaS startup.
8. CAPITAL: Good conversations this week prompted me to make sure to add some significant messages this newsletter focused on the Venture World. First up - seed stage start-ups do not have the pipeline, processes, or sales skills capability to give hard core growth metrics to an investor. So what metrics actually matter? This article from The Startup lists 3 metrics that should truly matter to investors at Series A. Second is the SaaS napkin: Point Nine Capital have just launched a call for feedback to update their SaaS Napkin for 2020 (it’s awesome but a little pre-covid) so here is the fresh publication from them on what it takes to raise capital (in SaaS) in 2020.
9. PITCH: The days of  mandatory in-person pitch meeting to a VC are mostly behind us (at least for the foreseeable future). Pitching over Zoom is where we are at. Before you focus on getting the perfect lighting though - check these 16 rookie errors founder make pitching to VC’s from Jason Lemkin and read here on how you will be Zoom-judged by the VC's you are pitching to.
10. FINANCE: Founders - take a good review of this! How many of these mistakes are you making? (i'm making a few) : 8 Finance Mistakes Growing SaaS Businesses Make (and How to Fix Them).

POD OF THE WEEK: Continuing the Bootstrapped theme from #7: Bootstrapping To $640k MRR With Omar Zenhom of WebinarNinja