Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending July 22, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Not all metrics should be measured in isolation: The three siblings: CAC, LTV, and Payback period, are vital interrelated metrics you need to build a great SaaS startup.


2. WHAT TO SAY: For outbound messaging, how can you make customer communications effective, balancing business objectives with empathy, authenticity, and value for the recipient during these times? Here are some great templates from Close.com, and Wordstream has some great copywriting guidelines in the time of Covid.


3. CONTENT MARKETING: Now is the best time to double down on content - so get writing!. But be sure to read here on Startup content marketing mistakes. Also, spot quiz hot shot - how long should a Blog Post be? Hypothetically this long (but also literally not that long - it's a long-ass blog post).


4. VENTURE: Pitchbook's Q2 Venture Monitor report dropped earlier this week. In Q2 2022, VC investors remain cautious with dealmaking. This complimentary article to the report rounded up the major five trends - on the positive Seed valuations remain high, and Billion-dollar plus funds posted a record year.


5. CRYPTO: Complimentary to the Pitchbook report above, this article referencing Crunchbase Data notes that Crypto-based Venture Capital investments dropped by $3.2 billion (26%) in H1 2022 - but that still represents a massive $9.3B invested in cryptocurrency startups this year. The number of deals increased to 534 (up from 456 last year).


6. UX: Optimizing a User Experience is a key to the long-term success of any service or product. I've mentioned in prior posts that Google has Web Vitals. This program offers developers guidance about best practice benchmarks on user experience, but here is the why: From Forrester - the Business Impact of Investing in Experience. Bonus - First Round Capital has a DEEEEEP dive/crash Course for Founders on the principles of UX Research from the people at Zoom, Zapier, and Dropbox.


7. DEX: Crack open your tech dictionaries for another acronym-based entry: Digital Employee Experience. Kinda expanding on #4 above - but this is all about your internal users - your team. In a surprise to mostly no one, 95% of employees say IT issues decrease workplace productivity and morale. This is a bigger deal AND a more significant challenge to solve now that digital tools are more mission-critical in today's WFH/Hybrid/Remote work environments. 


8. ONBOARDING: This was a definite add to my bookmarks of helpful sites. Mailmodo has a list of SaaS-specific Email flows, and tips across customer flows from cold nurture to Churn prevention.


9. APPLE: They haven't had a great week with current announcements matching the global economic slowdown. But let's get some perspective: Apple spends more money on R&D than the space programs of most countries, but it's still only 6.5% of their revenue, which is low for a technology company - how do I know this? Check out this glorious infographic from the genuine Impact Newsletter - All eight charts in the original post are amazing - read the whole thing here.


10. CASE STUDY: Product Led Groth hits security - see how Snyk snuck into some significant market share in the cybersecurity industry (150 ARR, 150% YoY growth) by following tactics from Atlassian, Slack, and Twilio.


POD OF THE WEEK: How to Prepare your Go To Market Strategy for a Downturn with Alexa Grabell of Pocus.