Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 18, 2025

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Multiples. Valuation multiples are so important for determining a company's worth. But they also seem so mysterious as they vary wildly based on growth stage, industry, and deal size. Dealroom has a multiples valuation guide with some great visuals and charts to help us all understand this mysterious metric better and also make data-driven decisions.


2. ENGINEERING: Here is a sharp take on the identity shift ahead. Software engineers are facing a massive identity crisis in the AI age (and so are Product Designers). As coding commodifies (is that a word?), devs must shift from "builders" to "designers of intelligent systems." Product design shifts from crafting UI to orchestrating intelligent workflows.


3. CAPITAL: Non-dilutive funding is having a moment. Startups are increasingly turning to grants, revenue-based financing, and venture debt to extend runways without giving up equity. This post breaks down when and how to tap each one.


4. MARKETING: Do you also feel personally attacked by the title of this article, "You Suck at Marketing." As an operator wearing many hats, including marketing, I begrudgingly have to agree. Most of what works for us inbound, and the result of Content Marketing - so read this article from the team at Organic SaaS Growth on how to be less sucky at that.


5. PRODUCT: Product Compass has rounded up a bunch of the best Product management frameworks—from Jobs-to-be-Done to RICE—and shows how to apply them contextually (not religiously). An excellent resource for not just PMs, but people who want signal over structure.


6. SEED-STRAPPING: A new for our tech dictionaries: Seed Strapping is the middle ground between bootstrapping and blitzscaling—raising just enough to find product-market fit while keeping burn and dilution low. Smart, flexible, and, in this new kinda venture market, increasingly popular.


7. AI: Stanford University is back with a 2025 version of their Artificial Intelligence Index Report (the 2024 version can be found here). It's not a quick read. Private AI investment hit a record $252.3B, U.S. funding in GenAI alone hit $109B—12x China. 78% of companies are now using AI (up from 55%), inference costs (cost of running AI prod) dropped 280x in 2 years, but performance is plateauing, and the AI marketplace is getting cramped!


8. 12-FACTOR APPS: Another entry for your tech dictionaries, this framework laid the foundation for scalable, maintainable SaaS. From config to logging to dev/prod parity—it's essential reading for any of us building modern software.


9. AI STACK: Inspired by the 12-Factor Apps methodology in #8 above, this Git-Hub repo outlines what it takes to build 12-Factor AI Agents - from runtime modularity to tool use, feedback loops, and logging. If you're more on the techy-side and serious about deploying LLM agents in production, this is a great read.


10. CASE STUDY: ChatGPT doubled its weekly active users in <6 months, hitting 180M+. Credit goes to GPTs (custom bots), voice features, and Assistants API. Product velocity + sticky features = growth.


POD OF THE WEEK: Adding onto #5 above, Tried and tested AI tools for product managers. Dave Killeen, VP of Product at Pendo, shares his go-to AI tools that can help make life a little easier for product managers.