Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending March 15, 2019

1. RIP PASSWORDS? Last week, the World Wide Web Consortium approved WebAuthn, a new authentication standard for password-free logins. This new standard allows websites to communicate with a security device to let a user log into their service. Dropbox and MSFT have been early adopters of the standard so far.
2. 5G: Verizon outlined it's 5G growth strategy late last month and rollouts (in the US) are not expected until 2022. The war to win 5G is definitely starting to heat up and is creating an opportunity for wireless network operators to expand their potential subscriber bases into the home. ISP’s should be nervous and/or starting to partner.
3. BIG RETURNS FOR THIEL: Peter Thiel (an early Investor in Xero), operates the VC firm Founders Fund which beats the pack when it comes to returns on investment in the VC industry.
4. SaaS IN CHINA: I know nothing about this topic. Luckily the team at ChartMogul do. Here is their report (TL;DR its about a 5-10 year lag to the US, which is the land of early adoption).
5. SECURITY: The RSA conference just finished up in SF this week. NZ businesses were there and here are some top highlights: The long tail impact of small scale data breaches; Cyber Threats on Mobile; Kyla Guru an amazing 16-year-old high schooler on Tales of a Teenage Security Supergirl.
6. RETENTION (of teams): In much the same way that companies measure life-time-value (LTV) of customers. We should also look at similar strategies with our internal teams (especially team members who are revenue focused).
7. FINTECH 2019 1/5: Part one of a Five part series on the Future of Fintech by Business Insider. I’ll be posting each one weekly as it is published. This first part covers the surging of fintech financing across the globe..
8. SALES: Choosing the Right Sales Metrics to measure for a SaaS business need to include the efficiency, quality and effort of all revenue focused activities.
9. STARTUP TIPS: There are some brilliant nuggets in this article from Punit Soni around his experience navigating the leap from a big tech to a startup….<Me nodding approvingly> “Worry about go-to-market, not product” and "Serve the user, not yourself".
10. AI? Not so fast with the Buzzwords tech startup! Close to half of startups jump on the Artificial Intelligence bandwagon without actually implementing any AI tech. But spending on AI  globally is forecast to reach $35.8 billion this year, an increase of 44% from last year.

POD OF THE WEEK: How to Spot and Build in Non-obvious Markets from First Round Capital

BONUS: REFORGE is a part-time and online growth, retention deep-dive, and advanced growth strategy program designed for Product Managers, Marketers, Engineers, Data Analysts, and UX/Designers in both B2B and B2C companies run by Andrew Chen of a16z. Applications here: https://program.reforge.com/apply