Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending October 1, 2021

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, the Nag Metric is one of the more obscure ones. This one is fun (but not for everyone). A call to action within a site or customer journey is kinda like a parent trying to get their kid to clean up their mess. It just gets a bit naggy after a while. This can impact your brand/NPS over time or just irritate people into churn. The Nag Score - outlined in detail here, is an attempt to quantify this.
2. VALUATIONS: Inflation concerns are once again making the stock market jittery for tech this week and Tomasz Tunguz got into this a while back looking at the Inflationary pressures within the Tech Industry regarding valuations. It's quite a wild valuation ride and the market is making it clear that valuations need a cool off. This new article in Tech Crunch is following the same theme tracking the evolution of valuations from 5x valuations in 2016 to this week where the median SaaS valuation multiple for public companies stands at 22.8x! I say this week because it was 21.1 x when I referenced it not even a month ago.
3. PRODUCT LEAD GROWTH: You may have heard me talk about this category from time to time. But here is a sub-category term for you: Product-Led Storytelling. PLG isn’t for everyone, some people, like the author of this article, call it hype, but probably so he can hammer home his agenda/story: That Product-Led Storytelling is way cooler. 
4. PRODUCT MARKETING: Marketing is a very broad practice, see here for a list of the separate marketing functions that can exist. So here is a very helpful dive into Product Marketing and specifically what the roles and responsibilities are of a Product Marketing Manager.
5. RENEWALS: Existing customers are the lifeblood of growth in a SaaS business, so making sure they renew is an exercise in revenue efficiency. New customer acquisition costs average about $1.10+ per $1 of ARR. Compare that to the cost of retaining or up-selling existing customers (about 12c-15c per $1ARR) - that’s 8 times cheaper. So take a peep at this article that not only lists 5 SaaS Renewal Best Practices but also explains how best to go about calculating renewal rates.
6. SDR RAMP: According to past studies, time-to-ramp for an SDR averages about 3.2 months. From Saleshacker here are some tips and tricks to make this ramp time as effective and successful as possible.
7. CSM ATTRIBUTION: How do you account for or budget the cost of a Customer Success team? The team at Gainsight dive deep into this question and come up with some fantastic insights - even though the question itself is complicated and the answers end up being more non-monetary than you would probably like. Owning the renewal, up-sell, cross-sell are key delineation points between expense attribution to different departments who CSM teams may sit under. 
8. BUYERS vs USERS: The person writing you a check is not necessarily the same person getting value out of your business. So take a read of this insightful article from HeavyBit on differentiating messaging based on this premise and the different profiles.
9. SAAS ELDERLY: Fun facts to help determine those SaaS companies that are on the elderly side of startup land: 1. The average SaaS IPO takes 12 years and 2. It took on average 10 years to get to a $1B+ acquisition/exit in SaaS.
10. CASE STUDY: SaaStr 2021 is underway! So be prepared for an upcoming onslaught of SaaStr links starting right here with a great 10-learnings deep-dive on Vimeo at $330m+ in ARR, and especially, on how they do self-serve and enterprise at the same time.

POD OF THE WEEK: The video version of #10 above on how to run a SaaS business that has both a large self-serve component and a free edition (ironically a story about Vimeo hosted on YouTube).