Top 10 in Tech - What to know for the week ending August 27, 2021

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: THE ROSE METRIC: People are the most important (and expensive) metric for any company, especially SaaS (I would argue more important than the actual product). Revenue per FTE is one metric to measure when it comes to people efficiency, but a better one perhaps is something called the ROSE Metric, which is a return per Employee. This metric highlights the tradeoffs between headcount, recurring revenue, and the EBITDA growth of a SaaS company.
2. CLOUD 100: Cloud computing powers pretty much every industry now so Bessemer Ventures/Forbes created a “Cloud 100” list a few years back, which is an annual ranking of the world’s top private cloud companies. This is the sixth year of this list and the number 1 atop of the list for 2021: Stripe (again! but now worth $95 billion). They were temporarily off the #1 spot last year due to Snowflake - which didn't last long as they IPO'd at the same time. Combined, the top 10 companies in this list are worth a staggering $190 billion and about 25% of the Cloud 100 top private SaaS companies are growing at 100% YoY or more at $100m ARR.
3. MARKETING: From Kyle Tibbitts - Marketing lessons learned over more than a decade growing startups. It all starts with the Product - 'Great marketing emanates from a great product.'
4. CONTENT STRATEGY: Hey - now is a great time to get writing everybody (I need to drink my own cool-aid here, so this is a bit of self-service) - CopyBlogger gives some tips on how to create content that resonates. Great complimentary user story for this on how Leadfeeder used Content marketing to increase their monthly signups.
5. PITCH DECKS: Why recreate the pitch-wheel? Alexander Jarvis has compiled a monster collection (139!) of funded pitch decks here (including the neo-classics: AirBnB, LinkedIn, Intercom, Transferwise, Canva, and Sendgrid).
6. DESIGNOPS: Another one for your Tech Dictionary: Listen up! Design isn't a thing, it's a process - the principles of which can be used and adopted across all lines of business (which is why design thinking is a very popular thing). Take a read here to get a much better rundown of what I'm trying to say. And then how to use design thinking (and OPs) in product teams to build better products and experiences.
7. ONBOARDING: Doing this well is key to increasing value, lowering churn, and creating advocates - so here is how some of the best do it: Leveraging email ZenDesk document their comms flow, and ChartMogul have a guide to their non-email version too. From HeavyBit here is a 4 phase plan and this article covers 5 Tips to Speed up Sales Onboarding without Sacrificing Quality.
8. CHURN: In our current tech and economic climate, crisis-driven product churn combined with saturation of choice are legitimate growth pressures, especially as many businesses are continuing with a more austere strategy facing uncertain economic recovery indicators. As I’ve mentioned quite often in the past acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining an existing one. Creating a culture of customer retention is one of the best things to do. This article discusses ways to make that happen.
9. DOCUMENTATION: A couple of weeks back I complained that building a comprehensive and useful customer Knowledge Base platform is difficult. But here is something to really consider (it's certainly a helpful article for my mindset) - there are probably stakeholders/purchases of your product who do not respond well to traditional marketing and, in fact, may actively hate it. These people are like me and while I may moan about how difficult creating good documentation is - it may be one of the best anti-marketing-marketing tools you have available, especially if you have an API.
10. CASE STUDY: You ever heard of Avalara? I certainly had not until I read this article and as of Q1 '21 (as they are already publicly traded) they were generating $600m in ARR!!! All via selling directly to SME's and growing 38% year-over-year. Jason Lemkin has 5 interesting learning from their Q1 report.

​
POD OF THE WEEK: It's CloudTV week! Expanding off of #2 above is the full playlist of the video version of the Cloud 100 2021. Reese Witherspoon even shows up (as the founder of HelloSunshine)