Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending July 12, 2019

1. DUE DILIGENCE - A FIVE PART SERIES. This five part series (over the next five weeks) covers how most VC's approach the quantitative part of doing diligence on potential investments. PART 1: USER GROWTH (and getting beyond vanity metrics)
2. CAC PAYBACK: Cash is king in the SaaS world and the shorter the payback period is for the acquisition (CAC) the better (getting to cash flow positive). Here is an article that looks at ways to shorten CAC Payback.
3. UNICORNS: The Unicorns of 2019 are looking a lot more American and Autonomous (and there are about 50 so far)
4. CAPITAL: Series B rounds put tech companies into a new category and really signify a maturity of a company. Because of this, it’s also a really challenging round to raise. Tomasz Tunguz writes here on Series B Challenges and 
5. B2B GROWTH: How to scale B2B sales and build a revenue rocket ship - this is a fantastically detailed guide from Juro (and a might fine example of content marketing with teeth) 
6. AI: Air Street Capital shares their perspective of AI developments over the last 12 months. It’s a whopper of a slide deck (and not pretty). But the info in there is incredible, covering research, industry, politics, and talent.
7. ATTRIBUTION: In the digital and ecommerce world, more and more efforts are Direct to Consumer (DTC) and the biggest challenge when leveraging digital marketing channels is around attribution (as they are all trying to make the claim). This article really breaks down how to measure attribution in a world where you don’t have to give Facebook all of your money.
8. SALES COMPENSATION: Recruiting is hard - motivating and retaining sales people is harder and understanding compensation levels is a key motivating crucial lever. This article outlines great insight on how to identify the right KPI’s and set the right targets.
9. FEEDBACK: G2 is a highly regarded software review site, G2 and its competitors such as Capterra are amazing places for product discovery and need to be a part of every B2B and B2C SaaS companies marketing agenda. G2 just published it’s latest list of the top Enterprise Feedback Management Software products (based on user satisfaction) and NZ’s own Ask Nicely topped the list.
10. SHE VC: Only 2.2% of VC money goes into female founded startups and Female venture partners make up just 9% of the VC industry so earlier this week Gayatri Sarkar (a General Partner at Blockchain VC Fund SportVEST) launched SheVC which will feature unconventional investment stories and women VC voices to bring change to the venture investment world.

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POD OF THE WEEK:  From SaaStr a practical perspective on the frameworks that can help SaaS businesses move upmarket.

BONUS: Share with anyone traveling to the US. Watch out AirBnB and WeLive, Sonder is a startup that rents serviced, furnished apartments in hip urban neighborhoods - they raised $225 million this week (with a valuation north of $1 billion). The company says it tripled the number of rentable units in its online marketplace last year to top 8,500 spaces in 20 cities.