Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 3, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Triple-Double-Double is a classic mantra we hear a lot in the SaaS world, referring to an abbreviated version of what it takes (revenue-wise) to become a $100m ARR business. Jason Lemkin of SaaStr pitches that "10-100-110" is enough, which is 10m ARR, 100% YoY growth, and 110% net-revenue retention. 


2. : Marketing is a practice covering many different disciplines and specialties. Which one should a startup hire first?


3. PRICING: It's never right as it has to evolve (and we are all not charging enough). Intercom makes the case that a solid pricing strategy helps shape an entire business model.


4. CAPITAL: This report from CB Insights predicts global venture funding to decline 19% in the second quarter, with retail tech and fintech sectors expected to witness a 50% and 28% slump. If that's not depressing enough for you, also take a read of last month's Sequoia Capital presentation on the downturn and what they think it means for startups.


5. SALES DEALS: Post COVID, Hubspot continues to benchmark sales and marketing data on the platform (aggregated from their global customer base of over 70,000 companies) for core business metrics using the January 2020 average. It's a handy benchmark tool to measure your business. Deals are up across all regions since 2020 - LATAM 43%!! Sales emails are on the decline, while Sales calls are WAY up (150% in Feb '22 compared to Jan' 20).


6. DUNNING: Discussing this one again with a client this week - and I suggested we build an automation for a "Dunning Letter", huh? What's that? Well, it's an actual term with a weird-ass name for involuntary churn (aka bad or failed payments). According to Baremetrics, SaaS and subscription businesses lose around 9% of their MRR due to failed payments. Learn more about a successful dunning (and pre-dunning) process.


7. ENTERPRISE SALES: Moving upmarket into larger organizations is a standard SaaS growth strategy. Increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per Customer) is good! But there is a lot to learn and a lot of time, learning, and effort required to succeed in this market segment. It's not easy, but it can be done. Here is an excellent guide from Outreach on breaking into deals over $100k ARR.


8. NETWORK EFFECTS: Building and scaling products (like Slack and Zoom) requires getting past the awkward "cold start problem" of zero users, so take a read of this conversation between Andrew Chen and Des Traynor on how to build networks that can make your product thrive.


9. PITCH DECK: Pitch Decks won't be replaced anytime soon, even though people are trying nifty ways to bypass them. According to TechCrunch, these are the five most critical pitch deck slides most founders get wrong and here is a Tear Down of recent and Successful Series A Deck. Want more? Then check this monster collection of funded pitch decks (including the neo-classics: AirBnB, LinkedIn, Intercom, and Uber - see #10 below).


10. CASE STUDY: Have you watched the TV Show SuperPumped (the story of Uber) yet? Back in 2016, Uber made the call to completely re-write their app. The cool thing (back then) was that the redesign had to be less than 100MB - because that was the max size of an iOS app available via cellular download (the app these days is 300MB +). This was because most first-time customers download the app curbside). Here is how they did it - it's a crazy developer ride. But not as crazy as that TV show!


POD OF THE WEEK: Kickstarting June (how is it halfway through 2022 already?) with an a16z podcast on how to kickstart Network Effects looking at Slack and Zoom as prime examples.