Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 23, 2023

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Value metric. Similar to the One Metric That Matters in that a Value Metric may be unique to your business or GTM model, these metrics directly align revenue models to the customer acquisition model. There are two types of value metrics: functional and outcome-based. Learn more here.


2. PRICING: This is an ongoing experiment, and we expect it to evolve forever (FYI, we are all not charging enough). Intercom makes the case that a solid pricing strategy should help shape an entire business model, and here is an excellent article on choosing the most suitable SaaS pricing model.


3. DOCUMENTATION: A few months back, I complained that building a comprehensive and helpful customer Knowledge Base platform is complex. Here is something to consider (it's certainly a helpful article for my mindset): There are stakeholders/purchases of your product who do not respond well to traditional marketing and may actively hate it. These people are like me, and while I may moan about how difficult creating good documentation is, it may be one of the best anti-marketing-marketing tools you have available, Especially if you have an API as part of your product.


4. VENTURE: This is a great Cheat Sheet from Antler - a guide for very early-stage founders on how much they can realistically raise in their first round. Especially if nothing has yet been built.


5. SALES: Insight Partners have their latest edition of the SaaS Sales KPI Report out. A couple of trends: Growth rates overall are normalizing after the 2021 COVID-19 digital push, and it didn't matter on company size - CAC payback is at least 10.5 months across all those surveyed.


6. GROWTH: Fast follow from above covering SaaS Growth Trends in 2023 via ChartMogul. The top quartile of SaaS business (ARR of $1 to $30 million) grew 62.1% in 2022 (vs. 93.4% in 2020), and retention strategies are now viewed as growth strategies. Lots of referencing of the SaaS Benchmarks Report in this one, and this Tweet is reporting that new revenue growth is falling across most enterprise tech companies.


7. CATEGORY CREATION: We all want to be up to the left in one of those fancy-ass Gartner/Forrester Quadrant reports. So watch this presentation on category creation from Neo4 and another version from Gett.


8. TAM: A critical question at the very early stages of startup land is, "What's the market size?" The size potential of this startup is directly proportional to the size of that market. Having a clear understanding of the Total Available Market (TAM), Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), and Target Market (TOM) can give all the confidence in the world to answer that question. But y'all really need to get started first with this TAM Masterclass.


9. ICP: Another entry for your Tech Acronym Dictionary. An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a detailed and specific profile of your startup's ideal customer. Being clear about your ideal customer profile (ICP),​ as it evolves is critical, as it drives everything in the business, including marketing, product, and engineering.


10. CASE STUDY:  From Netflix to more modern apps such as Midjourney (via Discord), this is an excellent blog covering how the biggest apps acquired their first 50,000 users. Bonus Fact: It appears as if Midjourney is generating about $200M Annual Revenue.


POD OF THE WEEK: #6 above in Podcast format - SaaS Growth Trends in 2023 from ChartMogul with Christoph Janz (Managing Partner at Point Nine), Daria Danilina (Co-founder, Salesroom), and Peter Walker (Head of Insights at Carta).