Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending May 15, 2020

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Another cheat week here - this time it’s Metric Reviews. If you have a desire to build a data-driven organization, there has to be rigor and discipline built around it. Sachin Rekhi has a great article discussing why metrics reviews should matter (TL;DR decision-making, inspection, intuition)
2. VIDEO GAMES: One of the bright spots of this pandemic is the rise of the video game sector. In particular live-streaming viewership. Video game live-streaming viewership was already climbing before the pandemic, but is expected to accelerate significantly over the next few quarters. Platforms such as Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming, and Mixer are all seeing significant increases according to this report by Streamlabs and Business Insider has a deep analysis of the sectors year ahead in this report (downloadable PDF!)
3. SAASTR: if you missed the virtual SaaStr Summit last month, don’t sweat it. I got you covered - replays here and slides here. 
4. EDGE: Edge computing has been around for a while. But given the rise of remote work and sudden digital transformation requirements, the ability to process data fast will become an important tool in many projects and initiatives. CBInsights gives the 411 on Edge Computing (and why it’s useful) in this article. 
5. MARKETING AND SALES: Hubspot continue to benchmark Pandemic-times data for core business metrics like website traffic, email send and open rates, sales engagements, close rates and more (aggregated from their global customer base of over 70,000 companies). It’s an incredibly useful tool as a benchmark to measure your business against. Explore all the benchmark data here or check this weeks summary here. Chorus.ai are doing something similar by benchmarking sales organizations (daily!) across their user base. A recent Tomasz Tunguz summary can be found here.
6. WHAT TO SAY: For outbound messaging, how can you make customer communications effective, balancing business objectives with empathy, authenticity, and value for the recipient during these times? Here are some great templates from Close.com and Wordstream have some great copywriting guidelines in the time of Covid.
7. MARKET SIZING: The dreaded slide on everyones pitch deck. Whats the size of the market. TL;DR if the market is not huge, same with your startup. Understanding the nuances of TAM, TOM and SOM is a great way to get started understanding market sizes as it applies to your business and the business problem your startup solves. 
8. SEO: Search Engine Optimization is some serious sorcery and an unavoidable topic, especially if discoverability and content marketing are part of your business strategy. The key basics of wining at SEO though come down to solid Keywords research  and Moz have released a great little guide. Bonus complimentary article (repeat post) here is also another guide on how to use SEO to boost branded keyword rankings on Google 
9. SALES: Of the B2B kind are based on true value delivered to a business. This founder breaks down their learnings of selling b2b into some concrete advice to pass on to others.
10. CRISIS ADVICE: FirstRound Capital have a comprehensive 8-part series on how founders can navigate tough economic times. This is bookmarked for me for sure!

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BONUS: Founder.University is a free two-day course on June 1-2 from Jason Calacanis and Co that is for startups that have products in market, but pre Series A funding. Apply here.

POD OF THE WEEK: To complement #10 above from First Round Capital via Invest Like the Best, The Past, Present, And Future Of Seed Investing