Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending January 15, 2021

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: THE ROSE METRIC: Starting 2021 off with Rose colored metrics. People are the most important (and expensive) metric for any company, especially SaaS (yes, I would argue more important than the software product). Revenue per FTE is one metric to measure when it comes to people efficiency, but a better one perhaps is the ROSE Metric, (Return on SaaS Employees). This metric highlights the tradeoffs between headcount, recurring revenue, and EBITDA growth of a SaaS company.
2. MVP CANVAS: OK - this is interesting (because visual frameworks are my jam). Y’all have heard of the Lean Canvas and the Business Model Canvas? Well check out this spin on applying the framework focused on designing and launching MVP’s (just don’t burn the Pizza)
3. TOP SAAS: Who are the fastest growing SaaS companies of 2020? This excel file shows the largest private SaaS companies ranked by revenue as of last month. There are over 40 SaaS companies with more than $2m in revenue that grew more than 200%
4. CX REPORT: All companies are under pressure, especially after 2020, to deliver optimal customer experiences (CX) and companies with a 'champion' mindset outperform their counterparts. Getting started it's difficult to know where to make investments that are likely to pay off so download and read this in-depth Report (78% of respondents said that customer-centric agility has increased in importance as a result of COVID-19).
5. UPSKILLING: If you have a new years resolution to learn something new, then take a look at this comprehensive list of 50 plus free awesome Certificates to earn in 2021 from Security to DevOps and Programming languages.
6. CHURN: In our current comic climate, crisis-driven product churn is a legitimate thing as many businesses are continuing with a more austere strategy. As I’ve mentioned quite often in the past acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining an existing one. Creating a culture of customer retention is one of the best things to do, especially during a pandemic. This article discusses ways to make that happen.
7. LEADERSHIP:  The SBI CEO Advisory Board has defined three top priorities for high growth CEOs going into the new year - all focusing on business fundamentals and being data-driven.
8. GROWTH MARKETING: If you're responsible for growth/marketing we've hit the motherlode this week!  Dan Siepen has put together a comprehensive list of resources and the lists are updated often, so make sure you bookmark this page.
9. PITCH: Getting a VC's attention in the initial pitch meeting is incredibly important - so here are  10 tips to help your pitch game from Fran Rotman presented in a 28-part Tweet-storm (and check these 16 rookie errors founder make pitching to VC’s from Jason Lemkin)
10. CASE STUDY: Xero! The accounting software company is approaching $1B in ARR so SaaStr takes a look at how they go there: Nailing a niche and an LTV of 81 months really helps! Markgrowth also has a great complimentary article on how Xero acquired 350k SaaS users in 2018.

POD OF THE WEEK: Sean Ellis: How to rapidly scale growth. Sean discusses when the right time for a startup to really focus on ‘growth’ is and also  how to create a culture of experimentation.