TOP 10 IN TECH - a weekly SaaS Newsletter
  • Top 10 in Tech
  • Home
  • Work
  • Medium
Picture


​TOP 10 IN TECH

​a weekly SaaS newsletter
Curated SaaS and tech insight from around the web repackaged for people to put to good use

Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 5, 2019

4/4/2019

 
  1. PITCHING: From Business Insider, The first-time founder's guide to pitching a VC
  2. FINTECH 2019 4/5: Part four of a Five part series on the Future of Fintech by Business Insider. In this deck, Business Insider take a look at how regulation is driving change in the financial services industry.
  3. VC MIXUP: Fresh off the press this week is a massive announcement from one of the premier Silicon Valley Venture Capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz: They are renouncing their Venture Capital status……….and the reason for this pivot is pretty disruptive; It’s to become a financial advisory service, which in turn will enable them to be more capable of investing into emerging tech asset classes such Cryptocurrency, Crypto Tokens, and ICO’s. Along with this news they also announced that all 150 employees are registering as financial advisors.
  4. THE 40% RULE: What is the 40% rule for SaaS companies? This video explains more but basically when a VC backed SaaS businesses (of over ~ $2m ARR) adds profit + growth rate, the total should be equal to 40% (or more). This helps calculate the cadence of a business: The faster they grow, the less profitable they need to be.
  5. PRODUCT MARKET FIT: This is one of my favorite topics, and one that founders are almost informally delusional about achieving. I never want to pop the enthusiasm of a founder (it’s part of the secret sauce that will help them succeed), but I want to sprinkle some grit in. Thomas Friedman summarizes some great thoughts about the topic in this post: TL;DR Often time Product-Market Fit is an Illusion.
  6. DATA and AI: Splunk just released their 2019 Predictions (as an e-book) about trends in AI and machine learning, IT operations, security, and IoT.
  7. DESIGN: Bringing good design into different elements of a business is nothing new to but there are specialized branches of design constantly emerging. Growth Design is my new all time favorite - merging typical HCD/Empathy Design but adding in the pragmatism of designing the jobs that need to be done
  8. PRICING FEATURETTE: Pricing is hard and it’s never (ever) perfect. a) If companies decide to have a pricing page on their site (which is a whole other topic), Jason Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr, lays out some thoughts of what makes a good pricing page. b) McKinsey get technical, outlining how to leverage big data to make better pricing decisions. FUN FACT: On average, a 1 percent price increase translates into an 8.7 percent increase in operating profits. c) Want to look at competitor prices? Comptera have a great article on how to conduct a high fidelity competitive pricing analysis project.
  9. GLOBAL STARTUPS:  Interactive report from late last year or the PDF version here - The US’s long-held singular dominance of startup and venture capital activity is being challenged by the rapid ascent of cities in Asia and Europe  (yes, and also in NZ). The US remains the clear global leader, but the rest of the world is gaining ground at an accelerating rate.
  10. VR: AT&T announced last week that it will exclusively sell the Magic Leap One, a mixed reality headset, in 2019. This could really spur the adoption of a consumer-focused VR headset as AT&T-owned media properties (such as CNN and HBO) are being spun into AR apps and AT&T also plan to introduce a DirecTV Now AR app for Magic Leap.

POD OF THE WEEK: This week is from Y-Combinator discussing Coaching for founders and having tough conversations.

BONUS: Microsoft just launched a free online AI Business School. Microsoft is trying to bridge the gap  "between what people want to do and the reality of what is going on in their organizations today.” More on the press release here.

Comments are closed.

      Get YOUR WEEKLY UPDATES!

    Subscribe to the Newsletter for SaaS Operators

    Archives

    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018

  • Top 10 in Tech
  • Home
  • Work
  • Medium