Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending May 3, 2019

1. FUNDING:  If you are a European startup and you’ve raised a seed round, what is the probability that you are going to raise a Series A round? Reviewing this article from Point Nine Capital, there are likely lots of similarities to NZ startups.
2. SALES: 94% of executives and 88% of employees said distinct workplace culture is critical to business success. For a business to be successful, sales and revenue also need to be successful - so how does a great sales manager build an amazing sales culture around the habits that need to be done?
3. $100m: Five ways to build a $100 million SaaS business: The 2014 edition vs today. Comparing the two, a lot has changed (including the blog platform), but the most significant change is the transition into Enterprise sales.
4. AI: I often think about what happens in a post-SaaS business model world where information, not software, is the product: Point Nine Capital take a look this from the perspective of how AI can disrupt the B2B Software model and Tomasz Tunguz also looks at The Four Strategic Questions Facing AI Agencies.
5. MARKETING: I download stuff so you don’t have to. This one is a SaaS marketing fundamentals guide from SaaSX. While this is not necessarily a playbook for everyone, it contains concepts, terms, asset definitions, and channels types descriptions that are really helpful to understand and master.
6. TEAMS: High performing teams make companies great. Google set out to uncover (via good ol’ fashioned rigor and data) what makes a Google Team Effective and came up 5 key pillars that set successful teams apart.
7. CYBERCRIME: Turns out Microsoft Office is the dominant target of choice for your run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. Excel, Word, and their buddies account for 70% of all attacks in Q4 2018.
8. CUSTOMERS: This is the age of the customer and modern tech companies can’t survive without adopting customer-centric values - but where to start? Here are five solid pointers.
9. CLOUD: Think your personal tech subscription bills are high? Apple reportedly spends $30m USD on Amazon’s AWS services per month. And this is just the bill for overflow from their iCloud data center. Frenemies for life!  Both Amazon and Microsoft reported a 41 percent increase in its cloud business last quarter. While both those growth numbers are the same Microsoft doesn’t report Azure separately. AWS has over twice the market share as Azure (which is the closest competitor).
10. SLACK: A favorite tool of mine and adding in from above Slack have even bigger AWS bills than Apple at about $50m monthly! They are also going Public this year (and probably next month) and are choosing to do so via an unusual route using what is called a DPO (which Spotify also did). In preparation for their listing, they have to disclose financials and this review of the business, that went from $0 ARR tp $600m ARR in 5 years, by Jason Lemkin shows some really interesting learnings. 

POD OF THE WEEK: From the After On Podcast a deep dive into AI from Stuart Russell (who literally wrote the book on modern AI) and why it scares him.
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BONUS: Want to know how it all ends (The Universe that is)? Check this amazing video when you have a spare half-hour for a 4K journey to the end of time