Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending February 7, 2020

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Let's bring it up a level this week - and talk about the metrics that matter. I discovered this article in LinkedIn and it’s great! Keeping things simple, Evan Kerr from Georgian Partners focuses in on efficiency and repeatability. Two significant hallmarks of a modern SaaS business. 
2. MARKETING: Five SaaS based marketing strategies explained by ProfitWell: from Freemium to Social.
3. INTELLIGENCE: The fidelity of the data you get is critical to get to the insights that are relevant and actionable for your business. New Zealand own TouchPoint group gives  5 tips to drive towards that juicy actionable stuff.
4. VC DISRUPTION: Super interesting questions being asked in these articles, centered on the question “Has the Venture Capital Industry become so big that it needs to be disrupted?”. This all started with an article in the New Yorker (which can also be listened too - so also made it into the Pod of the Week), which also prompted Tomasz Tunguz to explore the same question, pointing out that some VC Firms are turning to debt as a non-dilutive financing alternative, especially as startups are staying private longer and supply/demand pressures are more skewed than ever.
5. SALES: From the infamous words Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross: ABC - Always Be Closing. You can have all the prospects in the world, but they don't amount to much if no-one is signing. So here are 15 great closing techniques you can adopt into your sales processes and strategies.
6. DATA: This article from Go Practice is really thought provoking about the use of data and a) How it can be manipulated to create vanity metrics and b) How bias can really play a role in not just the fidelity of the data, but the fidelity of the intelligence gathered from it.
7. YOUTUBE: Brands seem to be sticking to YouTube through it tumultuous year loosing consumer trust. According to eMarketer 56% of US marketers used YouTube in 2019, (up from their initial estimate of 52%). By 2021, they are now calling that figure to reach 59% and the YouTube parent company (Alphabet) just released their earnings report earlier this week, where they disclosed details about YouTube's advertising revenue in its Q4 earnings - $15 billion in ad revenue, growing 36% year-over-year (YoY) and accounting for almost 10% of the company's total revenue!!
8. ONBOARDING: Good onboarding is one of the best things a SaaS company can invest in, as it impacts product activation and adoption, which in turn improves retention, and decreases churn. Userpilot nail this report (and this accompanying infographic) on onboarding observation taken from over 1000 B2B and B2C SaaS companies (Teaser facts: 86% of B2B and 76% of B2C had freemium offerings, only 29% used product tours.).
9. ENTERPRISE: Thinking of selling into enterprise? It’s a lucrative market - but the company and the product need to be ready for the requirements of selling into this segment. Here are some great tips on readiness from Sales Hacker. 
10. PLG: It’s been a couple of weeks since I referenced something about Product Lead Growth - so it’s time for more. ProfitWell have a great article on how to become Product Lead (leaning on HubSpot’s transition into PLG as a reference). As always I highly recommend checking out OpenView’s Product Led Growth Maturity Grader  -  this tool is designed to give feedback on how far along an organization is on the PLG maturity spectrum. 

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POD OF THE WEEK: Why read an article when you can listen to it? From #3 above is the Audio version of the New Yorker article posing the question that, "is the current state of the VC Industry worth the risk?"