Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending June 5, 2020

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Gross Margin. It’s my (unpopular to some) opinion that Margin is the do-or-die metric for recurring revenue based businesses. It’s why VC’s love SaaS Businesses so much. According to David Skok and Co, the Median is 78%! (This is after respondents were asked to back out stock-based compensation BUT includes customer support expenses. The SaaSCFO has you covered for best ways to calculate this though.
2. MARKETING: When it comes to growth marketing - a lot is email dependent. Andrus Purde at Outfunnel takes a look at some of the best in the game in this post - there is a bunch we can all learn from this tear down - great stuff!
3. THE SEED ROUND: Last week I referenced a path to Series A story. This week, let's look at the Seed round, and more specifically, what an investor expects within a seed round contracts (and why), it’s a great framework for founders to understand why certain terms are required at Seed stage. 
4. ESOP: Employee Share Option Plans are a wonderful idea to incentivize and retain great staff, so here is a bit of a deep dive here - but all from the same source, Alexander Jarvis’s Blog (who’s run courses on Udemy in the past): Starting with a cheat Sheet to terms, how to size an ESOP plan, understanding how dilution will work with an ESOP plan (complete with a calculator), and the full ESOP deep dive complete with videos, slide show, and am Excel based planning tool.
5. GROWTH: Five ways to build a $100M business - just follow this simple video, find your target market animal spirit, and you are good to go. This is a fantastic way to think about customers, segments, pricing, and cohorts.
6. STRATEGY: As an expansion on above, because there are many different ways to build a SaaS business, it depends on the “animals sprit" of the target market as to which strategy is best.
7. VC: US-based startups raised fewer total rounds in Q1'20 compared to recent quarters, but mega-rounds (deals work over $100m) rose sharply (up nearly 50% compared to the prior quarter.). At the lower check size end of town, it also looks like the VC Hustle (to wind deals) is over and pragmatic and controlled approaches to investing have returned.
8. PRICING: Current climates have really put a bit of a brake in most mid-enterprise SaaS sales cycles, I’m certainly seeing it. Everyone is just moving cautiously toward their digital initiatives. Here are three of the key changes to enterprise software buying habits, and how your team can adapt. CoBloom have a complimentary article on how to develop a cross-functional pricing squad.
9. JUST DO IT: It's easy to get caught up in the details and troubles that 2020 is slapping us in the face with. As a leader, keeping the beat and progressing the business forward during this time takes some help. So read this from Henry Ward from Carta on how to  create a continued Bias for Action.
10. FRICTION: Taking the friction out of their sales processes is one fo the best things to improve the efficiency and cadence of a business. Jason lemkin from SaaStr recently asked for some top troops on smoothing out points of friction - check it out, it's a great list.

POD OF THE WEEK: To add onto #8 above - here is the video expanding on pricing and packaging for mid-enterprise sales during COVID times.