Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending October 28, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Consumption-based LTV. If you are consumption-based - you probably have revenue that is not entirely consistent. Variable revenue is now a big thing in SaaS. Check out How to calculate LTV with variable revenue customers from the SaaS CFO (with a template!)


2. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH: It's all marketing hype and doesn't exist in real life. Take a look at this article which explains it more by taking a deep dive into the numbers of "Exponential" companies such as Slack ($0-$10m ARR in 10 months!!), Facebook, and HubSpot. According to McKinsey, despite the sector's image as a bastion of hypergrowth, only a tiny share of SaaS companies sustains growth rates above 30 to 40 percent.


3. CUSTOMER SERVICE: In this current age of the customer, enhanced by COVID, SaaSx makes the argument that in the SaaS world, Customer Success is actually the product. Want to start building out that product? Check the HubSpot guide on getting started with your Customer team.


4. VERTICAL SAAS: A lot of Big Tech is under threat from narrowly focused SaaS companies taking market share in niche areas and building massive businesses (for example, Toast is currently valued at $10B +). Check the difference between vertical and horizontal SaaS here and then look at how these vertical SaaS companies are taking market share from those cloud giants. 


5. SALES: Looking to establish your first (non-PLG) SaaS Sales Comp plan? So first, check this excellent report on the State of Startup Compensation from the team at Carta. They look into questions such as what makes up for the largest share of compensation spend, what roles get paid the most, and whether startups are still hiring remote workers (yes, remote hires now represent 62% of all new contracts). And then, read this post from Jason Lemkin on how to construct a framework for the first SaaS sales compensation plans.


6. INFLATION: Not sure if you have noticed, the cost to serve in SaaS is getting spendy, and according to this SaaStr survey, over 50% of respondents are planning on increasing their SaaS pricing in 2023 - are you? Jason Lemkin dives deeper into this and adds some words of caution on raising your prices too much.


7. DATA PRIVACY: Transformation is underway with Data Privacy, and personalization has historically been a big part of marketing efforts via tracking Cookies). Web3 is making changes to better privacy, and Third Party Cookies are now a thing of the past. So what does that mean for personalization? Venturebeat dives into this topic and also looks at how marketing, in general, can be a bit more private.


8. UNEMPLOYMENT: The news coming out of big tech regarding layoffs and hiring freezes may be headwinds for everyone else, but unemployment in the tech industry is still crazy low: 2.1%.


9. DECENTRALIZATION: With the Web3 hype going mainstream, the movement from "big-tech" Web 2.0 to a decentralized Web3 can seem a little bombastic. So here are some specific models and principles of decentralization that are a little more palatable. 


10. CASE STUDY: This is from those of you just getting started: Cliently, a sales engagement SaaS website, grew their web traffic from 0 traffic to 75k monthly in just 8 months, netting $7k new monthly recurring and 700 signups every month. Here is how they did it.


POD OF THE WEEK: A great podcast on Benchmark Capital's history and founding story.