Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending October 14, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: NPS: We all like to be liked - Net Promoter Score is a way to quantify that for your product. This White Paper from Ask Nicely reviews NPS (among other common customer experience metrics) and explains how to measure and calculate NPS. See this link for some methods to improve the NPS of a SaaS product. Neil Patel then gets into a 3 step program of how to leverage NPS for your business.


2. COOKIES ARE DEAD: Not the chocolate chip kind of Cookies. Love them or hate them, the reality is that browser cookies have headed the way of the Dodo, so conversion tracking via cookies being phased out creates a new attribution problem to solve. However, conversion modeling is a way forward, so if attribution is a necessary part of your business or your channel/partner's Business, read this article from Google on why conversion modeling will be crucial in a world without cookies.


3. IP: If you haven't noticed Facebook's general MO, many startups in the software space are vulnerable to their competitors producing copycat technologies. Take a read of this interview from Nico Hodel of Start It Up NYC on how to better protect your Tech IP and from Entrepreneur magazine - 4 IP Mistakes startups make and how to avoid them.


4. ANNUAL DISCOUNT: If you are part of the great SaaS Ponzi Scheme like me, it may be no surprise that annual contracts are discounted. But how much? 10% is the median - and the range is tighter than I thought - 6%-14%.


5. ENTERPRISE: Moving upmarket into larger organizations is a standard SaaS growth strategy. Increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per Customer) is good! But it's hard to pull this move off as a tiny startup selling to large organizations. So here are 10 tips for selling to big companies as a little guy.


6. DEMO: This one is very interesting to me - as the path to Demo is precisely the primary call to action my website is designed for. I assume it is the same for many B2B people, so..... "Should Your Website Drive Prospects to a Demo?" Read the article to determine if this is a problem at your startup.


7. VIDEO: Complimenting above, nailing introductory and Demo videos is a bit of an art form. Don't know where to start or have video-block? Get inspiration from this curated collection of some of the best, and here is a list of 6 videos every SaaS Company needs. (TL;DR Explainers, Company, Testimonials, landing, page, FAQ, and Personalized Sales).


8. COMPUTERS: Here is some interesting data; according to Canalys, PC shipments plunged by 18% in Q3. FYI - it's back to school Quarter in the Northern Hemisphere - this drop in demand is the fastest fall in over two decades. The only bright spot is good old Apple - which saw a 1.7% increase and is the only brand not losing ground.


9. PRICING: This is always hard to nail, and we are not charging enough. Still, this highly bookmarkable 4-step pricing exercise from First Round Review is a great framework to put an objective product lens on pricing - it's something you can use for a pricing workshop with your team.


10. CASE STUDY: HubSpot's turn because I use them - this is another SaaS company that has managed to cross $1b in ARR (now at $1.7B and growing at about 41% YoY!!) even though I renegotiate lower rates with them YoY :-). They have been around for 15 years but didn't get started until about 2011. You can watch the $0 revenue to IPO breakdown here too.


POD OF THE WEEK: Erica Schultz has led revenue strategies for Oracle, New Relic, and Confluent and has some great advice on Scaling Revenue this year and next.