Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 24, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Customer Renewal Rate measures the percentage of customers who renew their subscriptions at the end of each subscription period. High renewal rates inform companies about many things - product-market-fit, market, pricing fit, value, business model viability, etc. The authors of this article from Profitwell describe the formula and differentiate between renewal and retention - one is actively renewing, the other is actively not cancelling.


2. FREE-ER: It's not necessarily a time to rethink Freemium as a SaaS Go-To-Market strategy. But it's probably a good time to think about a more free-as-a-sales-strategy - according to Jason Lemkin from Saastr - more-free seems to be working well these days. BTW Freemium is not just for B2C businesses like Dropbox and Spotify. Freemium is now a strategy employed in gaming, Enterprise, Cloud, and Online Payments.


3. PLG vs SLG: Product Led Growth remains a popular topic (according to my click-through rates) - why? Just take a look at this Expansion SaaS Benchmarks report (it's a downloadable PDF). Again, product Led Growth businesses lead the pack! So let's look at the differences in PLG vs more traditional SaaS Go-To-Market Strategies - Sales Led Growth. But according to this article, it's not a "vs" thing - you don't have to choose.


4. MOATS: As mentioned in past posts, Moats are one of the best ways to provide a competitive advantage for your business, and moats come in all kinds of different flavours (such as speed, Brand, or growth). But here is a great one that conceptually covers b2b and b2c: EMOTION!. Regarding B2B, this post lists some popular and effective ways companies create moats for their products.


5. VALUATIONS: Check this real-time market data feed from AngelList Venture. At the Seed end of town, early-stage valuations are in flux, but more significant than that - deal frequency has slid down a big bank, and founders are diluting more on deal close.


6. ENGINEER vs ENTREPRENEUR: I love this article as it's a manifestation of the battle that lives in my head: Engineers love to get it right, and Entrepreneurs love to get it done. Such a simple statement materializes in so many ways.


7. NOW WHAT?: We just experienced the incredibly abrupt end to almost a decade and a half of SaaS prosperity. So now, what do we do as operators? Bill Gurley (the guy I mentioned in #8 a couple of weeks back) has some Twitter-based commentary for you (it ain't his first rodeo), and the CEO of Gainsight has put together an excellent framework for executives to get through the rocky times ahead.


8. NEGOTIATE: In 2021, forty-two per cent of us opted for sales-negotiated pricing models - HubSpot will totally negotiate, FYI!. Negotiating is tiresome, so read this article for some hot tips on why you may be negotiating your SaaS contracts all wrong.


9. CLIMATE TECH: While we are seeing venture funding across SaaS and Startups drop, we may have a bright spot; investment in the climate tech sector is expected to remain strong. Climate Tech already went through a significant downturn - but investors think it's different this time #climatetech2.0.


10. CASE STUDY: As someone forced to use Yodlee, I envy those who get to use Plaid - a financial services connector currently valued at $13.4 Billion. Check here for an explanation of what Plaid is and why it's so valuable for those of us in the financial services or financial adjacent. (it's the legacy technology the highly fractured US banking systems are built on).

POD OF THE WEEK: Expanding on #10 above - I'm enjoying the "Equity" podcast from Tech Crunch who have some gossip on the Stripe vs Plaid drama.