Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending February 16, 2024

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Gross Dollar Retention: Net Dollar Retention is an important metric for our new capital-efficient LeanOps world we live in, but let's also consider NDRs twin - Gross Dollar Retention (GDR). GDR measures the revenue that you keep just from your existing customer base. The big difference is that it doesn't include new or expansion customer dollars. Read more via the SaaS CFO here.


2. MARKETING: Bookmark this article from the MKT1 Newsletter that dives into how to organize a B2B growth marketing team as we move away from just a demand gen/Growth hacking worldview.


3. DEMO ANALYSIS: For my daytime business, demos play a pivotal role in our sales process to experientially show and discuss the value we can deliver to a prospective customer. The team at Content Beta analyzed a bunch of Product demo videos (100+) and reported back on places where these videos went wrong, so yours don't have to.


4. INVESTORS: A great article from Cruchbase reviews the startup landscape with seven super informative charts. After a tough 2023 (the lowest startup funding in five years) and an ongoing valuation correction, 2024 looks to bring some stability. Seed funding remains robust, but there will remain a cautious approach to hiring (efficiency per employee as a new key metric). It also shows the shift away from Web3/metaverse (remember that?) toward AI Investments. M&A activities have slowed but may pick up as/if valuations ​improve.


5. SEED: Speaking of seed (see above), early-stage fundraising in tough markets requires focusing on key metrics. Capture investor attention by showing the capabilities of the business and market: Burn rate & runway (efficiency and planning), TAM (market opportunity, and CAC (sustainable customer acquisition and growth).


6. TECH TRENDS: This is the final tech trends report of the year, I promise - but this is always a good one from CB Insights. There is a lot to summarize in the 100+ slide report covering 20 trends, so I'll lob in some teasers: Generative AI dominated the investment scene, attracting almost 50% of all AI funding (which was $42.5B across 2,500 deals, which US companies also dominated), Google was the most active investor in Q4'23, there is also a pretty sweet nod towards quantum computing, and it's continued path to commoditization/commercialization.


7. ASYNC CULTURE: Crack open your tech dictionaries again for this one - it's something we do at my day job that we are trying to get better at; I just wasn't aware there was a label for it. Management and leadership can get very out of sync with 100% remote and distributed teams across different time zones. So, this is a great Async playbook for those who need to practice this. It's going on my wall, so I can work on a couple of those pillars (especially the stuff around documentation).


8. BUYERS vs USERS: The person writing you a check is different from the person getting value out of your product. So, read this insightful article from HeavyBit on differentiating messaging based on this premise and the different profiles.


9. REVERSE TRIALS: My article on trials was popular last week, so 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, and at the end of the trial, they can either buy or downgrade to a fully 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.


10. CASE STUDY: CATEGORY CREATION: I know we all want to be up and to the left in one of those fancy-ass Gartner/Forrester Quadrant reports. So take a watch of this presentation on category creation from Neo4 and another version from Gett.


POD OF THE WEEK: Lots are covered by the 20-minute VC this week, who talks to Adam Fisher of Bessemer Ventures about his 27 Years in Venture Capital.