Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending July 29, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: CPA - Cost per acquisition. This is often conflated with 'Cost of acquisition', but they differ. Andrew Chen dives into the details as to why (and also how to calculate CAC accurately).
2. CAPITAL: The VC downturn of 1H '22 has resulted in an increasing number of startups turning to alternative sources of capital - such as venture debt and revenue-based financing. According to PitchBook data, venture debt deals for tech startups in the first half of this year have reached $14.1B. Here is more on how Venture Debt works and what these financiers care about
3. PERSONAS: SaaS B2B Marketing is a pretty unique beast - and getting into the minds of an idealized customer often requires going through the practice of creating personas - you should try it - it will definitely make you a better SaaS marketer. For most SaaS companies creating multiple personas is often a strategic necessity. So here is an additional differentiator (and what the difference is compared to a persona) of an ideal customer profile.
4. MARKETING: More for your SaaS dictionary: Buyer Intent Data. There is never a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy and channel for a business. So how does a business find out the best marketing channels for them? This article suggests that everything needed to answer that question is already within the data a business generates daily. (you're gonna need Personas - so don't skip the links above)
5. LANDING PAGES: You may not need 25,000 landing pages like Zapier does - but you probably need >1 - so how about you bookmark this resource of the best 690 SaaS landing page examples sorted by category (about-us, Pricing, features, etc.)?
6. CUSTOMER DATA: Customer data management is a practice, not a technology. I love that simple message. Bluconic gives the crib notes/5-steps in this article about developing a strategy to optimize and improve customer experience using good data management practices.
7. LAW: Not the litigious kind - from CBInsights is a 67-page report covering the 11 laws driving success in tech, such as Amazon's 2-pizza rule, the 80/20 principle, and more.
8. FRAMEWORKS: Beyond the above laws, a successful framework can distill complex processes or models to make execution more of a simple recipe. Kinda why OKRs exist. Sarah Tavel has compiled a great list of compelling Frameworks covering: The 10x model, The hierarchy of engagement, Hype cycles, and more!
9. CRYPTO: This article dives deep into the foundations of the entire crypto/web3 financial system and its components, and this complimentary article highlights the differences in crypto vs. traditional (and shadow) banking.
10. CASE STUDY: This one is fun - it's a history of user interfaces (all OS based ) over the years going all the way back to the start of the Internet in the 70s.

POD OF THE WEEK: Being first to market is not necessarily a winning advantage - Des Traynor (co-founder at Intercom and a great speaker) dives into elements that make a move into Enterprise effective.