Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending December 17, 2021

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: The SaaS Magic Number - this is simply the balance between Sales and Marketing Spend and new ARR/MRR created. It's a good number for indicative over or under spend on marketing and sales. Check the SaaS CFO on how to calculate the Magic Number and from Jason Lemkin, some more nuanced thoughts on issues he sees with the metric and a reference to IVP, who Benchmark the Magic Number is 1.2 on average.
2. CAPITAL: In the current tech world, it doesn't have to always be about Venture Capital or equity (and dilution) when looking to finance. Revenue-based financing is quickly becoming a popular way for startups to raise funds without sacrificing equity, with the rise of stand-out services such as Lighter Capital and The 20-Minute Term Sheet in the past couple of years. Here is how it works and what these financiers care about. HINT: It's ARR and growth. Here is the Founder's Guide to Venture Debt with advantages vs. disadvantages of Debt vs. Equity from the SaaS CFO.
3. FUNDRAISING: Another link to IVP this week to get 2022 started right. It's a comprehensive guide to SaaS capital raising so that you can be better prepared for your companies next round. This 25-page article covers financials, go-to-market strategies, market sizing, valuation, and storytelling.
4. UNICORNS: In total, there are more than 800 unicorn startups globally. So actually, this visualization covers the world's top decacorns (unicorns with valuations above $10 billion) as of December 2021, according to CB Insights data.
5. FUTURE TECH: It's fast approaching the end of the year, so time to start curating some interesting tech forecasts. Benedict Evans has one of the better (and bigger) ones and does this kind of thing annually. This year focuses on the 2025-2030 horizon and has a heavy emphasis on all things web3 and the non-Facebook metaverse.
6. SDR RAMP: According to past studies, the time to ramp for an SDR averages about 3.2 months. From Saleshacker, here are some tips and tricks to make this ramp time as practical and successful as possible.
7. FIPS: OpenView has delivered the 2021 Financial and Operating Benchmarks Report. This report is designed for SaaS operators to compare themselves against peers across many metrics that matter most in a SaaS business. View the interactive report here. Covers benchmarks such as employees, YoY growth, marketing spend, burn rate, NDR CAC, and diversity!
8. DIVERSITY: The OpenView report above provides interesting diversity benchmarks based on a companies stage. But let's take a look at diversity in founders: Less than 2% of enterprise software startups in the U.S. feature a female founder (actual report here). 500 Startups also looked into coronavirus's disproportionate (and adverse) effects on female and minority founders. Let's not miss out on the fact that in 2020, Black founders received only 0.6% of venture funding!
9. OUTAGES: If you were hiding under an internet rock last week or last month, you might have missed some pretty significant outages from Amazon Web Services and a big Zero-Day exploit across a lot of the Internet's Apache-based web servers. Which raises some serious questions - such as how resilient is the internet? This article makes an excellent case for #5 above; the web needs some decentralization to remain resilient.
10. CASE STUDY: I like a good case study covering products I love to use. Grammarly is now valued at $13 Billion after a $200m round last month - with 30 million daily average users (of which I am for-sure one) they have been profitable since day one as they are one of the ultimate PLG businesses that merge B2C and B2B with a TAM of.........pretty much everyone. A great case study on SEO, engineering, great content, and an embedded and rewarding product experience.