Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 21, 2019

1. SaaS METRICS: This list the top fifty (yup 50) metrics SaaS companies need to understand (and mostly measure) - Shareable PDF Version! We also have Tomasz Tunguz coming into the mix with Redpoint Ventures Spreadsheet version.
2. PLG: Another acronym for your tech dictionaries - that stands for Product Lead Growth, something that NZ’s RayGun is leaning heavily into. One of our favorite tools at NZTE, Calendly, is deeply driven PLG organization and their VP of Product talks more about that strategy in this article.
3. CONVERSION: From Incredo - 9 steps for SaaS companies to boost conversion rates (beyond free trials)
4. ENTERPRISE: Want to sell product to Enterprise customers? It’s lucrative, but it’s also hard. Great post from openView on what is required (Time, reliability, integration, and Security, Security, Security!). Missing from this is also good old fashioned cash, to weather the often overlooked SaaS Negative Cash Trough.
5. VENTURE: Scott Kupor from a16z has written a book attempting to demystify how VC funding works and Fortune magazine has a great interview with him (a TL;DR version of the book). Andrew Chen - one of his partners at 16z also wrote a nice summary of his insights from the book. BONUS: Scott has  this great article on how to raise money from a VC.
6. DISCOUNTS: Are a great incentive for longer term contracts. But how much should the discount be? Ben "The SaaS CFO” Murray reviews this in detail AND provides a nifty Excel Template you can access here.
7. TERM SHEETS: During merger and acquisitions when founders agree to sell their companies to larger entities, the resulting conversations can be stressful. Atlassian wants to take some of that stress out of the process and earlier this week publicly published its Term Sheet document for acquisitions.
8. COACHING: Often times the best ways we can truly support founders are also the hardest to help address. The team at Founders Coach list of bunch of dilemmas that founders face that keep them up at night (and broken out by company stage).
9. ON-BOARDING: Doing this well as an organization is critical for retention not only of customers but of your team. FirstRound provide a list of 6 must-reads for on-boarding success of new hires.
10. CHURN: A definitive guide (on how to prevent it).

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POD OF THE WEEK: Brain Fanzo talks about digital empathy (another new concept for your tech dictionaries) -- the notion of using digital tools to really understand a buyer.