Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending July 8, 2022

​1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: LVR (Lead Velocity Rate): LVR is the lead growth rate of qualified leads per month. This metric clearly explains a business's future revenue and growth. (see #2 below for why this is important in 2021). Setting a goal to increase LVR by 25%, for example, will enable you to equally increase the revenue generated for your business. 


2. AGILE MARKETING: Hold on to your hats, Marketers - Agile processes are coming for ya! This is another one for our Tech Dictionaries - it's how to validate learnings, make mistakes and deliver impactful results. Hubspot cover this concept in detail and outlines how DoorDash hardcore-leveraged this methodology to increase revenues from $885m to $2.89 billion in a YEAR!


3. JTBD: Jobs to be Done is one of my favourite frameworks - it's a way to make the process of innovation accessible and tangible in very pragmatic ways. Take a deeper read here on a lightweight JTBD framework - broken down with real-world business examples - or skip straight to the templates.


4. AHA: Not talking about the Band. Take a look at this great read on product design centred on discovery - what the author references as "Aha moments" - through a customer journey from first encounters to deep adoption that focuses on long-term retention. Go-Practice has a great complimentary article on how to design for Aha (with examples).


5. SALES: Brex (a financial services startup targeting Startups) tried to expand their services into SMB as part of their growth strategy a couple of years back, and, quite infamously, they ditched that segment last month because selling to startups is not the same as selling to SMBs.


6. REVERSE TRIALS: Crack open up your tech dictionaries to add in this term. Reverse Trials are a play on freemium, where new users start with a time-limited trial of all your paid features, and at the end of the trial, they can either buy or downgrade to a fully free tier - this article also explains how Airtable do this well. The benefit here is that, emotionally, the users experience loss aversion where the pain of losing something is twice as powerful of a motivator as the pleasure of gaining.


7. METAVERSE: According to this study from the Analysis Group, the metaverse could add $3 trillion to the global economy within a decade in a movement similar to the Smartphone wave of 15 years ago, and according to this McKinsey report, total investments into the metaverse surpassed $120B in the first half of this year, which is more than double the previous year ($57B). Bonus content of a beneficial Metaverse market Map from CB Insights.


8. GROWTH: Anna Khan rightly pointed out in this article that since Q1 '22, there has been lots of advice but not a lot of tactics. So here we go: The new 'Market of '22' expectations on good growth remain high, but with the new funding environment, growth at any cost is no longer rewarded. Operators are expected to find the balance between growth and efficiency. So it's time to brush up on Burn Multiple and Sales Efficiency metrics; there is more on that next week, but check this article to see what quadrants you may fall into.


9. VALUATIONS: VC firms value startups at 30% less than they did before 2022 as investors drive harder deal terms. Jamin Ball backs up this data, noting that public SaaS valuations, specifically EV/NTM revenue multiples are down about 50% from their peaks.


10. CASE STUDY: Continuing on the Plaid case study and Plaid vs Strip drama mentioned in the newsletter a couple of weeks back - this week is about Stripe and specifically from what Sam Gerstenzang learnt while he was there leading the 75-person payment UI group.


POD OF THE WEEK: See the video version of #8 above from SaaStr Europa '22 (and Point Nine Capital)