Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending December 9, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Ever heard of the Mendoza line? Well, it's a rule of thumb metric and a numerical that can help SaaS Companies answer that incredibly frequent question, "How fast do I need to be growing to be attractive to a venture investor?


2. LAW: Not the litigious kind - from CBInsights is a 67-page report covering the 11 laws driving success in Tech, such as Amazon's 2-pizza rule, the 80/20 principle, and more.


3. FRAMEWORKS: Beyond the above laws, a successful framework can distill complex processes or models to make execution more of a simple recipe. Kinda why OKRs exist. Sarah Tavel has compiled a great list of compelling Frameworks covering: The 10x model, The hierarchy of engagement, Hype cycles, and more!


4. IDEAS: Here is another framework for managing them - I found this a beneficial article with a template that is now on my wall! An HD version of it is here. A little bonus is a compilation of mental models that entrepreneurs and investors leverage to develop new startup ideas & venture theses from the same author.


5. CUSTOMER OPERATING SYSTEM: What exactly is the difference between Customer Success and Customer Support? Get started here to understand the nuances. They are both parts of the same customer journey spectrum. Totango posits, in this recent SaaStr Annual presentation, that we need a fresher look at Success and Support that they coin the "Customer Operating System" (Like the presso? Here are the Google Slides deck).


6. ENGINEER vs. ENTREPRENEUR: I love this article as it manifests the battle that lives in my head: Engineers love to get it right, and Entrepreneurs love to get it done. Such a simple statement that materializes in so many ways.


7. REVERSE TRIALS: Crack open up your tech dictionaries to add in this term. Reverse Trials are a play on freemium, where new users start with a time-limited trial of all your paid features. At the end of the trial, they can either buy or downgrade to an entirely free tier. This article also explains how Airtable does this well. The benefit here is that, emotionally, the users experience loss aversion, where the pain of losing something is twice as powerful of a motivator as the pleasure of gaining.


8. PRODUCT vs. SALES: Notion has the article we all want to be ask as we strategically head into 2023: Should my Go-To-Markey strategy be Product-Led or Sales-Led?


9. GROWTH: This is a pretty good summary of the year that was 2022 in SaaS from Capchase's recent Pulse of SaaS report - In 2022, bootstrapped SaaS companies are doing better than those that are VC-backed. Mainly as they lead the pack in terms of capital efficiency/LeanOps.


10. CASE STUDY: ChatGPT - I'm guessing you have probably heard a thing or two about ChatGPT this week - if not, it's a conversational AI model that can interact with users in a more human-like way, and it's a significant breakthrough that's demonstrating how things are about to change with the way we interact, do things and experience things digitally. Travis Jamison has a great long-form article breaking down many use cases ChatGPT and its future offspring will change (including poetry).




POD OF THE WEEK: RevOps Squared chats about all things SaaS metrics, focusing specifically on how to use metrics to inform your decision-making. Listen here.