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

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: VALUE: A value metric is what a company charges for - in modern SaaS that can be per block of users, per transaction, bandwidth, etc, etc. Aligning that pricing value to the value a customer receives is the trick! (that needs tracking). Why does that matter? Well according to Profitwell, who studied about 4,000 companies, the corollary is serious growth (companies using value metrics are growing at double the rate than those companies not using a value metric) AND reduced churn. 
2. COMPETITION: Of course you will always be asked for Market Sizing in a pitch, but how well prepared are you for questions about the competition? (Pro-tip - saying you don't have competitors is red-flag). Read this article from Search Engine Land that outline the steps you can follow to get some quality competitive analysis research in. Pro-tip 2 - as we are all tech people here - do not underestimate the power of G2, product hunt,  or Capterra to set your research foundations.
3. GOVERNANCE: Mark Suster (from Upfront Ventures) has started a series on his Medium Blog covering StartUp Boards. With a follow up article (which I think is very relevant to NZ startups) which shows a board structure based on stage! He also provides a blog post AND a 43 slide presentation on Managing Startup Boards with really interesting (for founders at least) continuous integration/agile approaches to management.
4. USERS: Convincing users (that are not friends and family) to adopt, and pay for, your product at the early stage is a significant milestone. Check this impressive post from Lenny Rachitsky on what he learned unpicking that for some of todays tastes growing B2B businesses.
5. SALES EMAILS: Sweet - a power point deck for y’all. This is from Predictable Revenue on the four pillars they think constitutes a quality sales based email campaign. TL;DR less is more. FYI - there is a resource page at the end of quality helpful additional resources.
6. GROWTH: No matter what all the fancy decks you look at with envy tell you - revenue is NOT linear, like ever. When it comes to solving revenue growth problems, most will jump on the get-more-customers bandwagon. But read this article, centered on MRR as a representative of growth, but asking "what things can a SaaS company do to grow without adding more customers?" TL;DR: 1. Reduce Churn, 2. Upsell/cross-sell, 3. Charge more.
7. CUSTOMER SUCCESS: This is all about preserving as much revenue as possible over time (post purchase) - complementing the post above,  take a (deep) read of this extensive guide for building great customer success teams - it’s not just about limiting churn, but also a department and practice to convince existing customers to buy even more from you. As Jason Lemkin said back in 2015: "Customer Success is where 90% of the revenue is”. Want a working example? Chart Mogul expand on this and explain their approach to a (successful) success management strategy.
8. VC IPOs: Pitchbook’s report - Index of Venture-Backed IPOs for Q3 2020 is out. Big (but maybe obvious) key observations: the performance of the newer companies differs radically across factors including sector, size, business model, and market cap - all add up to higher performance (and reward)
9. SEO: Discoverability trumps content marketing and needs to be an endless-part of any modern business strategy.  Moz have a great little guide and here is a pretty good (current) guide from Founder Institute. But how does SEO work if you are part of a larger enterprise? The basics of wining in this category are summarized in this report from DeepCrawl.
10. FRICTION: Every SaaS business process I look at seems to have areas of friction and when it comes to SaaS products, user-based friction becomes a critical aspect to understand and solve. This article breaks user-friction down into 3 types (emotional, cognitive and interactive) and provides tools to help understand and solve for each different type.

POD OF THE WEEK: CASH. Pretty much every SaaS founder: Long term prospects look promising, short term cash sucks. From Hiten Shah and Steli Efti comes a great podcast on How to Improve Cashflow During a Crisis.