Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending January 24, 2020

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Expansion: OK - this is a total deep dive. Expansion revenue costs pennies on the dollar vs net new customer acquisition costs and also demonstrates that a business can deliver increasing value to customers (and monetize that value!). On average  37% of new ARR bookings is attributable to cross sell/up-sell activities and improving retention or monetization can actually impact growth 2-4x more effectively than improvements in acquisition. (see slides 41-46 for the real nuggets). Tips on how to optimize this via renewal available here. But I really enjoyed reading this working example of what that means to a companies growth and revenues from a product perspective from the company Buffer. 
2. PERSONALIZATION: As an add-on to above, personalization can reduces acquisition costs as much as 50% and 87% of companies see a lift in key growth metrics Here is a great article from Chart Mogul on the (modern day) personalization fundamentals.
3. MARKETING: From Kyle Tibbitts - Marketing lessons learned over more than a decade growing startups. It all starts with the Product - 'Great marketing emanates from a great product.'
4. VENTURE: Tomasz Tunguz takes a look at the health of the US Venture Market as we head into 2020. Even with an increase in scrutiny in 2019, it seems like we are still on a run and sentiment in the valley continues to be positive.
5. DEV SUPPORT: Your devs are the lifeblood of your tech business, so how best can organizations provide ways to optimize their developer  support? Well check this State of Developer Report  as a resource to get started - Two-thirds of the developers say maintenance of legacy systems and technical debt hinder improved productivity! TL;DR? Devs are problem solvers (but they generally don't want to talk to you) - understanding this should feed into how you design a support system for your products.
6. PRODUCTS: And speaking of products, want to build them faster? Hiten Shah has a great book for you on his 5 habits. It also has real-life examples of how different tech companies practice these habits.
7. SEO: This is an oldie but a goody: Want to know how Zapier grew their business leveraging SEO - here is the case study. TEASER: It kinda involves them building 25,000 seperate landing pages (no I didn’t accidentally type to many zeroes)
8. ONBOARDING: It’s something I’m deeply into right now. This is how ZenDesk do it and ChartMogul have a version to
9. OKR’s: Pioneered by Google a few years back, OKR’s have emerged as a part of the suite of modern product and company best practices (that include Lean, Agile and Jobs-To-Be-Done frameworks). Heavybit have a great article on steps to get started for the first time within your organization.
10. SALES: A great primer from our friends at Lighter Capital. Sales cycles, commission rates, models, and metrics all explained (with best practices)

POD OF THE WEEK: Controlled Chaos: The Inevitable Marriage of DevOps and Security. A great podcast that reflects the growing reality that security needs to evolve and become integrated into the development process

BONUS: Need a SaaS Metrics refresher? Chart Mogul got you covered with a weekly course.