Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 17, 2020

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: ESOP: Not yet figured out your employee stock ownership plan? Well it’s a great incentive mechanism to retain and motivate top staff. Check this cheat sheet or here’s a video version if you prefer to watch it. Obviously working out the dilution factor of an ESOP is an important metric to know - so check this page for more on that.
2. MOTIVATION: In our newly minted WFH environments, motivation/distractions are evident and abundant. Good habits are a key component to WFH productivity - PWC (via their snazzy Medium page) have some great insights on how to develop good habits. If you are a CEO/Exec also check this article built from your perspective.
3. MARKETING: So in this uncertain environment, where people are actively wondering if they are just the band playing on the Titanic, SparkToro admits that marketing is #$%*ing hard right now and  CXL take a look back at the financial crisis of the 2000’s as a comparison. Google also have some online courses to elevate your digital marketing skills and Business Insider have a deep report on AI in Content Marketing
4. ONBOARDING: Just like pricing, product onboarding is never perfect and is always a bunch of hypothesis competing to be the most successful. User Pilot have 3 product experiments to try that can reduce churn
5. WFH ETIQUETTE: Do everyone a favor and read these articles: The Information on Zoom Etiquette  (TL;DR - please, wear pants) and here is a run down of how to onboard WFH SDR’s and AE's
6. DOWN ROUND: As the possibility of a 2020 down-round grows for startups and tech companies, this becomes an important clause to understand in your term sheets. Read this for a full understanding of how a ratchet mechanism can work.
7. EMAIL MARKETING: From Salesforce is actually a pretty darn helpful best-practices guide to all things email marketing related (focusing on getting your data ducks in a row) - PDF for your downloading pleasure.
8. CONTACT TRACING: We’re all going to hear this phrase a LOT in the upcoming months. The technique has been around for a while, but Apple and Google are launching a joint venture to deploy contract tracing functionality across Android and iOS devices globally - so here is a really helpful primer on Contact Tracing and the solution being implemented by Gapple/Appoogle.
9. VENTURE: The new Venture Monitor report for Q1 2020 from Silicon Valley Bank is out. It was a strong start to US VC in Q1 2020 but, in a big surprise to no-one,  there will likely be a significant slowdown of venture activity for the rest of 2020.
10. REMOTE SELLING: Hopefully after #5 above, you are fully prepped for onboarding remote AE’s and SDR’s ;-). But how do they sell remotely both tactically and strategically? Hunt Club has some suggestions.

POD OF THE WEEK: To compliment #10 above, here is the webinar replay of the Remote Selling presentation (with Aaron Ross of Predictable revenue)