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

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: DAU/MAU. The DAU/MAU ratio is a popular metric for companies that need to measure user engagement. Rule of thumb: Apps with over 20% = good. If you have 50%+ - you’re world-class.
2. WEBSITE: Do you ever ask the question “Is Your Website Stressing Out Visitors?”. This line of questioning hadn't occurred to me before so how do we know if our website sucks or not? Well first up - focus on the jobs you want the website to do. GrowthInsider has released a great and comprehensive list of the biggest mistakes made on websites also take a read here on how to conduct an audit of your content.
3. PERSONAS: SaaS B2B Marketing is a pretty unique beast - and getting into the minds of an idealized customer often requires going through the practice of creating personas - you should try it - it will def make you a better SaaS marketer. For most SaaS companies creating multiple personas is often a strategic necessity. So here is an additional differentiator (and what the difference is compared to a persona) of an ideal customer profile.
4. MARKETING: More for your SaaS dictionary: Buyer Intent Data. There is never a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy and channel for a business. So how does a business find out what are the best marketing channels for them? This article suggests that everything needed to answer that question is already within the data a business generates every day. (you're gonna need Personas - so don't skip the links above)
5. CUSTOMER DATA: Looping together 3 and 4 above - Customer data management is a practice, not a technology. I love that simple message. Bluconic give the crib notes/5-steps in this article about how to develop a strategy to optimize and improve customer experience using good data management practices.
6. PRODUCT MARKET FIT #1: I talk about PMF a fair bit - but never with a true VC lens, even though it's a really important metric for earlier-stage investors. So AirTree (an early-stage VC) has just published this article taking a look at what metrics VCs like them look at for signs of Product-Market Fit - and also what the red flags are.
7. PRODUCT MARKET FIT #2: Asking the PMF question IMO is always the more noble focus (as opposed to being focused on answering the question). But sometimes - you just gotta know (see above) and here is a case study on how Superhuman did it. Also, this article has some great PMF definitions. PMF was called “the only thing that matters” to early-stage startups by Marc Andreessen 12 years ago. Now his team gets a little more nuanced suggesting focusing on Product-User-Fit as an indicator towards achieving PMF. A similar nuance is also true post PMF with repeatable-scalable revenue models as a precursor to a repeatable-scalable business model (you know - the one with actual profits).
8. FUNDRAISING: Hitting the fundraising motherlode this week with this downloadable PDF from IVP (DataDog, Coinbase, Slack, Twitter, et al) on how to be fully prepared for your company’s next fundraising round. This 25-page article has sections covering financials, go-to-market strategies, market sizing, valuation, and storytelling.
9. HYPERLINKS: Probably a read for your coffee/Pomodoro break as we are breaking out the way-back time machine for this one (back to 1993). This newsletter is jam-packed with hyperlinks. So here is a question, not necessarily helpful for your business, but one I never thought to consider before: Why are hyperlinks blue?
10. CASE STUDY: I love myself a good transparent (warts and all) SaaS growth story. This one is a keeper from Tom Hunt on how ConvertKit took a very wobbly path over 5 years to eventually unlock $1.7m MRR - this was in 2020 - they are now at about $2.3m MRR

POD OF THE WEEK: Unpacking Product Market Fit - the podcast version - this episode references different examples and strategies to understand what kind of PMF would work for your startup.