Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending March 22, 2019

Kia Kaha / كن قويا

1. SALES: Indirect Sales strategies give a slightly different Cost of Acquisition (CAC) calculation than more direct sale routes - they are also the holy grail of SaaS growth if executed right. TOP TIP: NZ’s very own Qotinet is a leader in this space providing Enterprise Sales Teams a Channel Intelligence platform to truly lower CAC (Cost of Acquisition) and accelerate sales.
2. GAMING: The annual Game Developers Conference is currently underway with many NZ game developers in attendance and as part of the conferences keynote, Google just announced its big foray into the video game market with Stadia, a console-free, streaming-only gaming platform.
3. RECRUITING: The current jobs market both in NZ and the US is highly competitive. Here is a list of top HR Tech/Tools that modern HR teams use to recruit in such a competitive environment. (Shout out to NZ’s own Weirdly being listed)
4. NZ8 and DATA: Some of you asked about the content of our NZ8 event last month, the topic was on how to build out world-class data based organizations, the slide deck can be downloaded here.
5. GROWTH: Five ways to build a $100M business - just follow this simple video and you are good to go (Xero and Vend are referenced)! This is a fantastic way to think about customers, segments, pricing, and cohorts.
6. SxSW RECAP: We just got back from Austin for another year of SXSW…...Highlights: Mitsubishi showed off an interface that turns voice into 3D text; Amazing presentation by Neil Patel on the future of Enterprise Marketing (HINT: Its Omnichannel), AI is everywhere, as is #MeToo and shortcomings with diversity and inclusion in tech. The Instagram co-founders also had a reunion.
7. VALUATIONS: Gil Dibner from Angular Ventures provides some sobering thoughts on the current state of the VC marketplace. Pointing out the big bubble in tech private valuations, mainly due to the excess of capital available, and the compounding affect of future valuations this will create (and also what to pragmatically do about it).
8. FACEBOOK: The continued negative press of Facebook continues, with a report last week that U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions (estimate is about 15) and as Mark Zuckerberg promised to revamp the platform with security and privacy in mind, it was also revealed that Mobile Numbers used for two factor authentication and Security were being use to search for users
9. DIGITAL ADVERTISING: Amazon’s ad business growth outstrips Facebook and Google. Valued at $1.5 billion  revenue, in 2016, revenue has increased by about 120% YoY.
10. FINTECH 2019 2/5: Part two of a Five part series on the Future of Fintech by Business Insider. This week Business Insider  take a look at the mega-trend of open banking, which is reshaping financial services

POD OF THE WEEK: From the a16z Podcast: Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise