Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending February 28, 2020

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: LTV/CAC. The ratio of Lifetime customer value versus customer acquisition cost is one of the primary metrics that companies use to measure efficiency (3 is the magic number) - 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 payback period…...
2. GROWTH: I’m a sucker for good growth stories, especially at the earlier stage of the spectrum, so here is a good one from Lemist on how they grew from zero to $1m ARR in less than 2 years (and without any funding). If you don't like this one, try this user-focused growth story from Autopilot (who went from 0 to 2,000 customers in 18 months)
3. 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 have a great guide on how to craft that first customer case study and Uplift provide 6 best practices to be using in your story.
4. SALES DATA: To get a really efficient revenue engine running, the fidelity of the data you are collecting before analyzing in the sales funnel is critical. Once you have that cold hard data, check the following article for (step-by-step) how to perform a sales analysis.
5. SEO: Always an unavoidable topic, especially if discoverability and content marketing are part of your business strategy. Here is a great little guide on how to use SEO to boost branded keyword rankings on Google with plenty of relatively easy things to tackle and in addition copyblogger has written a great article on how to get more traffic with SEO.
6. CRYPTO: Not something I mention much as, optically, we still seem to be in a Crypto-Winter, but behind the scenes a lot is going on (and behind the scenes of those behind the scene is where it’s all happening). 
7. CONVERTIBLE LOANS: They are kind of debt, until they are not. But Convertible Loans are a quick way to access money quickly via an interested investor. Point Nine Capital describe in detail what is involved in a convertible loan and what to look out for.
8. CADENCE: Disruption is such a cliche word, but one thing that differentiates a disruptive force in any industry is simply the cadence with which that force operates. TL;DR: Cadence IS the advantage. Agile ways of working were pioneered by the tech industry ya know. For fast execution to work, fast strategy is necessary - here is BCG’s take.
9. MARKETPLACES: They don’t get enough attention in this newsletter, so time to change that a little this week. Earlier this month a16z introduced the Marketplace 100. A ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. AirBnB tops the list and the next 3 down are all food delivery services - will be interesting to see if any of that consolidates next year. They also have an accompanying article talking about what might be next for marketplaces.
10. SECURITY: From an investor perspective, there is an ever-increasing value seen in good security practices when evaluating startups. Particularly when evaluating mid-market and (especially) enterprise technologies. From Heavbit here a couple of great articles discussing this in detail - from what investors are looking in a teams response to security to how to pass those awkward, friction-inducing Enterprise Security Reviews….and also how to get started. 

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POD OF THE WEEK: To compliment #9 above, from a16z:  Metrics and mindsets for retention and engagement as marketplaces and other platforms evolve over time