Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending August 29, 2025

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: The Magic Number measures how effectively your company generates $$ via front-end spend - basically, new revenue generated over a specific period with the expenses incurred on Sales & Marketing during that same time frame. Check the SaaS CFO for guidance on calculating the Magic Number, and refer to this article that deconstructs it, highlighting that it's a complex metric influenced by various factors, such as market conditions and company spending, making it difficult to pinpoint specific areas for improvement.


2. PRODUCT-MARKET FIT: A long-running general rule (or a Growth-ism) in the Startup world is that getting to $1m of ARR is a strong sign of Product Market Fit (PMF). Kaiitlyn Henry from Openview runs contrary to this Growth-ism, stating that there's no specific revenue indicator that defines PMF, but also continues to write about concrete signals of PMF available beyond a $$ amount and gut feel. Read more about all those signals here. This sits well with Brian Balfour's work, who wrote an amazing article on the subject that is now almost 10 years old and still incredibly relevant for figuring out what stage(s) you may be at.


3. USER LED GROWTH: ULG is when your existing users become your biggest advocates, driving leads straight into your funnel. It's not for every B2B SaaS company, but when done right, it can build a flywheel that slashes your CAC and ramp times. A classic example is Dropbox's referral program, where users earned extra storage by inviting others—a powerful way to turn customers into evangelists one GB at a time.


4. MARKETS: Carta's Q2'25 State of Private Markets is out and shows venture deal volume up 17% QoQ, but check sizes fell (Seed –9%, Series B –6%). Median Series A valuations slid to $37M (down from $42M in Q1), while Seed valuations held flat. Liquidity is still tight: tender offers down 32% YoY.


5. SCALE: This is a must download. Mark Roberge, the founder of Stage 2 Capital and member of the founding team at HubSpot, has this incredible playbook for scaling. In the book, Mark has defined different stages of scale, with quantifiable measures for each of these stages, structures of the sequences, and signals of when to move from one stage to the next, with the optimal go-to-market design for each.


6. CC/CD: New entry for the tech dictionary: Continuous Calibration/Continuous Development (CC/CD). Unlike CI/CD, AI products drift without constant tuning. This framework highlights why calibration is as critical as shipping for long-term performance.


7. IDEAS: Hunting for your next SaaS idea? Check out 1-star reviews. This is similar to scouring Google Searches in that buried in customer complaints are unmet needs and broken workflows, which in reality is a goldmine for your next thingy.


8. AI RISKS: A core problem in current AI is its ability to be so wrong so confidently. Which really erodes trust. Here's the fix (pretty please, AI companies). Just build models that admit uncertainty and show reasoning.


9. AI: Worth pondering the hype. Casey Handmer argues AI's economic impact will dwarf expectations. Think trillions in productivity gains, new industries unlocked, and labor markets reshaped far faster than past tech waves.


10. CASE STUDY: If it's true that the IPO markets are slowly starting to creak back to life, Canva is shaping up as the next big B2B one. The design giant has crossed $3.3B ARR at a $42B valuation, with 185M+ MAUs. Their playbook is Freemium growth, rapid expansion into enterprise, and a relentless product velocity that rivals the best in SaaS.


POD OF THE WEEK: Adding onto 5 above, Funnel and revenue math kindly explained by Mark Roberge and Matt Plank of Rippling in the Science of Scaling podcast.