Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending March 4, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: ACV or Annual Contract Value is one of the most popular metrics in the SaaS world; this article from Chartmogul goes into detail about what it is, how to calculate it, and how to leverage it in your business. This article also looks at Annual Contract Values (ACV) and groups them into animals we can all relate to (Mice, Rabbits, Deer, Elephants, and Whales) - Animal Contract Value :-) - anyone, anyone???? This analogy can then be used in turn for what it takes to build a $100m business and how different segments contribute to total revenues over time. Check #7 here for a spin on ACV
2. EMAIL: Take a look at this PowerPoint deck from Predictable Revenue on the four pillars they think constitutes a QUALITY sales-based email campaign; it's an excellent resource for anyone with email marketing as part of their business. From Better Marketing is a complimentary deep dive into a single cold email and why the author opened it (TL;DR - yes, it's all about everything in the email's design, but more about how targeted the message is).
3. MVP CANVAS: OK - this is a bookmarkable one for me (because visual frameworks are my jam). Y'all have heard of the Lean Canvas and the Business Model Canvas? Well, check out this spin on applying the framework focused on designing and launching MVPs (don't burn the Pizza). DIFFERENTIATION: Standing out in a saturated sea of SaaS is a tricky problem to solve - pro-tip - never do it on price alone. So ask yourself, "why should someone buy from you?" It requires balancing familiarity and differentiation - read this article to get you thinking on the topic more.
4. CUSTOMER PROFILE: Here is an excellent tool for anyone. Sales can be a real uphill battle when sales teams don't truly understand their ideal customer. Building out customer profiles is a beneficial way to identify your best customers. So download this Profiler kit pdf and use these questions and survey generator to quickly generate the ideal questions and template for your customer profiles. The rest is all on you.
5. DEADLINES: Adding on to #6 from last week's newsletter on Estimation (which was a super popular post) - Author Douglas Adams once wrote, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.". It's funny because it's true. So when it comes to software development, how do you make peace with that whoosh? Check this article from Free Code Camp that discusses the art of managing the deadline - part of it is complementary to a reference to the sub-art of saying NO from a while back.
6. UPMARKET: Expanding on the Animal Contract Values listed in #1 above, moving upmarket into larger organizations is a pretty standard SaaS growth strategy. Zoom just announced earlier this week their intention on upmarket growth. Jason Lemkin gives it a 50/50 chance. Increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per Customer) is good! There is much to learn, and a lot of time and effort is also required to succeed in this market segment. Here is an excellent guide from Outreach on breaking into deals over $100k ARR.
7. CONCENTRATION: Break out your tech dictionaries again because, no, I'm not talking about my brain's ability to get distracted. Lightspeed Venture Partners' Nnamdi Iregbulem has outlined a new metric he created called weighted average contract value (WACV). He argues that this metric provides more meaningful information than ACV (see #1 above). The reason is that B2B SaaS revenue is highly concentrated due to the distribution of the customers being very concentrated: A large number of smaller companies, a moderate number of moderate-scale companies, or a very small number of very large companies).
8. MOBILE: In 2021, only 233 mobile apps crossed the $100 million mark in annual revenue but saw consumers spending $133 billion, and 75% of them were games. The global Mobile gaming market is forecast to reach $153.5 Billion by 2027
9. PRODUCT MARKETING. The SaaS world is getting crowded, and competition to acquire new customers is rising. Good Product marketing can give SaaS companies an edge to compete in this hyper-crowded market. Take a look at this complete guide to Product Marketing in 2022.
10. CASE STUDY: Expanding on #1, #6 and #7 this week  - many well-known tech companies (such as Calendly, Atlassian, Zoom, and SurveyMonkey) moved upmarket, Tom Hale has a great case study on how it was done at SurveyMonkey (who are now well over $400m in ARR) - Enterprise is currently growing 53% YoY and accounts for 29% of total revenue

POD OF THE WEEK: We all dread that small amount of toxic customers who take up a disproportionate amount of people's time and energy, take a listen to this podcast from the team at Startups For The Rest Of Us for some fantastic tips on dealing with toxic customers.