Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending January 19, 2024

​1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: (Lead Velocity Rate): LVR is the lead growth rate of qualified leads per month. This metric clearly explains a business's future revenue and growth. Setting a goal to increase LVR by 25%, for example, will also enable you to equally increase revenue generated for your business. 


2. FOUNDER-LED SALES: Founder-led sales is a well-documented part of the startup journey, especially in the early days, and often with very inexperienced or more technical founders. Here is a great article (with Engineering-based analogies) on how Founders can mentally re-frame and execute an excellent sales program.


3. PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: It's a weird open secret that many B2B SaaS businesses generate significant revenue from implementation and deployment projects, often captured as revenue from Professional Services. So check out Dave Kellogg's post called The Professional Services Paradox, where there are times when only a Startup can deliver the services needed to execute a transformation strategy. BTW - on average, Service Revenue as a percentage of Total Revenue caps out at 11% with enterprise-focused businesses, but even at the lower end of town, it's still 5% of revenue with SMB-focused businesses. Fun fact: more professional services = less churn.


4. VENTURE: 2023 was tough not only for startups but also for VCs. We've lost OpenView (some of the best reports and benchmarks out there) as well as Countdown Capital. The recent Global Private Market Fundraising Report from PitchBook shows that capital last year is tracking to finish from flat to approximately 5% higher, but Megafunds ($5 billion and up) account for about half of all capital raised. Pressure is on first-time fund managers as LPs favor larger, established funds. Andreessen Horowitz (one of the megafunds) was the most active VC last year - 79 VC deals.


5. BENCHMARKS: Last week's newsletter was just a week too early, as ChartMogul launched "ChartMogul Benchmarks" on their platform on Friday. It's designed to give operators on-demand access and an up-to-date snapshot of what good growth looks like for SaaS companies. It requires an account - but it's free!


6. GROWTH: 2023 was the LeanOps revolution as outlined in #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #8, #9, and #10 in last week's newsletter - we're all part of the newer capital-efficient world all startups live in (not just the bootstrapped ones). So check out the new 2024 State of Customer Growth Survey Report from Catalyst, which shows that while new business growth and retention are essential, customer expansion is the key to very capital-efficient revenue growth (startups of $1M+ ARR, have a third of new revenue from expansion). It also outlines the risks of overselling, poor implementation, and lack of account relationships, which can hold back that growth.


7. DEVS and AI: According to the StackOverflow 2023 Developer Survey, Stackoverflow's main contribution to developers looks to be under threat: About half of developers are using Github's Copilot, and over 80% are using ChatGPT. Other good nuggets: 1/3 still identify as Full Stack, and Developers primarily learn online (over 80%). JavaScript remains the most commonly used language, and AWS is the most widely used cloud platform (by about double).


8. CYBER: Cyberthreats are going nowhere fast in 2024; as threat surfaces increase in size and complexity, they will probably get worse. So bookmark this new Incident Response Team Guide from Microsoft to add to your intranet, share with your incident team, or roll up into your Incident response strategy.


9. MOBILE: The newest State of Mobile report is out from data.ai, which reviews last year's mobile market and looks at Trends for 2024. Here are some highlights: We're up to an average of 5 hours per day on our phones - up 6% from last year; most of that time is on social (where TikTok rules and X is on the decline), even if people are not posting as many updates - everyone is all up in everyone else's DMs instead. In-app spending is on the rise, - $60 billion in 2023 (excluding games)


10. CASE STUDY: Expanding on number 2 above, here is a list of 10 Founder-Led Sales lessons learned with a recent roundtable from Race Capital.


POD OF THE WEEK: Sam Schillace, deputy CTO and corporate VP at Microsoft, was also the architect behind Google Docs/workspace and, in this podcast, discusses how to be innovative, the evolution of Google Docs, embracing failure, and the importance of convenience in Product Design.