Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending January 30, 2026

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Cap Table - I'm bending this week's post to make it fit - I just think this article is pretty cool, and your Cap Table is a definite metric, I'll fight you on this. Your Cap Table isn’t just an ownership spreadsheet - it’s used as a decision-making constraint. It defines control, dilution, hiring leverage, follow-on funding options, and exit outcomes. Messy early cap tables compound quickly, especially with SAFEs, friends-and-family deals, advisor equity, and uneven founder splits. Clean cap tables preserve optionality; broken ones can quietly kill deals (moral), and most importantly, future raises.

2. CO-FOUNDERS: Starting from an idea, but being non-technical often means looking for or finding a technical co-founder. This article makes the argument that non-technical founders stall by outsourcing progress. Be productive first - talk to customers, validate demand, ship scrappy versions, reduce market risk. TL;DR - Productive founders will attract productive co-founders and efficiently build product.

3. SOLO: Fast follow from #2 above. And according to this article (bit of a biased domain name, though, tbf) - going Solo is no longer taboo, and 1/3 of all startups are currently flying solo. Driven by better tools, a bucket ton of AI leverage, and lower operating costs. The tradeoff hasn’t disappeared - speed and control go way up, but resilience and perspective are the things that go down.

4. BENCHMARKS: Mostly Metrics kicks off some good benchmarks for 2026 - they surveyed 132 SaaS companies (≈50% >$25M ARR, ~25% >$100M). Median renewal rates sit around 91% (top quartile ~95%, bottom ~84%). CS headcount peaks at $10–50M ARR then compresses at scale. 56% of CS teams are paid on expansion, but 63% don’t control it. Median CS variable comp is just ~20%, and the data show that product quality and customer fit drive renewals more than comp plans or org structure.

5. LEAD: New term for you to ponder, "Leading from the front" isn’t just a military-ism for most of us in startup land, though - it’s the difference between high-trust teams and checked-out ones. Stay SaaSy breaks down how great leaders model urgency, own the hard stuff, and never ask for what they won’t do themselves.

6. GROWTH: Growth is now a trust problem, not a funnel problem? With SEO (see #7 below to question that), paid, and corporate social collapsing under AI pressure, Elena Verna argues growth shifts to trust-based systems: employee-led distribution, creator credibility, community, and product-led brand. Retention also follows the same logic: when features commoditize, customers stick with products they trust will keep delivering outcomes, not just efficiency.

7. VELOCITY: Fast follow from 6 above; If growth is now a trust problem, velocity is the new authority. Om Malik argues that modern networks don’t reward being right, deep, or durable - they reward momentum. What travels fastest wins: first take beats best takes, access beats independence, memes beat meaning. The algorithms look to be optimizing for speed (and that ain't necessarily).

8. SEO: Oh shit - turns out, I'm kinda wrong - search (and SEO) isn’t dead. Graphite + Similarweb data across 40k sites shows organic traffic is down just -2.5% YoY, not the -25% to -50% collapse everyone’s been yelling about. AI Overviews do hit CTR (-35%) but only show ~30% of the time, mostly on low-value informational queries. Commercial search still holds, and 90% of Google clicks remain organic. SEO is changing, not dying.

9. CHURN: AI is facing a retention reckoning we can all learn from. ChartMogul data across 3,500 companies shows AI-native apps have ~40% GRR and ~48% NRR (for perspective - that's worse than B2C and far behind B2B SaaS (82% NRR)). The issue is all those “AI tourists” - low-cost, easy-to-buy tools that are just as easy to cancel. Pricing matters: AI products >$250/month look like real SaaS (70% GRR, 85% NRR). Durable ARR comes from deeper workflows, higher price points, annual plans, and narrowing the gap between shipping AI and actual adoption.

10. CASE STUDY: Here is the start of a great 3-part article from Notion covering the challenges faced by (VC-backed) startups towards $100m in revenue. Fun (?) fact: Only 1.2% of us achieve this milestone.

POD OF THE WEEK: Reed Hastings, ex-Netflix CEO, breaks down how to scale trust, talent, and bold bets - without turning your company into the Hunger Games. No PIPs, no micromanagement—just clear values, adult treatment, and $100M risks like House of Cards with no-BS masterclass in culture.