Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 16, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Cohort Analysis (free Cohort Analysis template!). GoPractice has a Product-focused article on how to forecast key product metrics through cohort analysis. The Startup looks at this metric from a VC Due Diligence perspective.
2. FIRST PRINCIPLE THINKING: Want to be more like Elon (but without the SEC/Twitter dramas and kids)? Take a read here on the concept of First Principles Thinking. Not gonna lie, I've re-read it for the 10th time this week, and it is a great way to make my brain hurt. Want more? Fine. Here is a complete guide/website. Now that you are an expert on this principle, here is how First Principle Thinking can be applied IRL - in this example, towards a Product Lead Growth business.
3. NETWORKING: SaaStr Annual is happening this week (more on that in next week's newsletter) - so this one is for all of you attending. Scaling a tech company requires a bunch of know who. But networking (especially at places like SaaStr) is hard regardless of personality type. Here are some great tips from a veteran introvert. Be Curious!
4. NDR: Net Dollar Retention is an essential metric in the new world of Product Led Growth. It's used to help answer the following: Does my Startup need to increase customer acquisition/marketing spend? Crunchbase has already done the work to calculate what good NDR benchmarks should look like, but this month, Tomasz Tunguz looks at what it takes to achieve 200% NDR!
5. DUE DILIGENCE: Of the VC kind has gotten harder and longer. So read this article from Allison Weil Lechner at Hyde Park Venture Partners for great insight on what VCs expect when deciding on an investment. FE International has a similar report but written from an acquisitions lens.
6. SECURITY: According to an upcoming report by Axonius, 66% of IT leaders are concerned their organization is more vulnerable to security risks due to the rise in SaaS application usage. So the big question to you, as a SaaS operator, is; what are you going to do, as part of your sales cycle, to address this concern? They are not wrong - because Phishing attacks abusing SaaS platforms have seen a massive 1,100% growth from June '21 to June '22.
7. CONTENT: Viewing content as a product was valuable insight for me. As was being told that the strategy of "producing 10 blog posts" is wrong. Take a read of this Two part blog (part 1 and part 2) to change your mindset on what good content should be.
8. CAPITAL: Hurun released their H1 Global Venture Capitalists report for 2022 earlier this month, along with their Unicorn Index. Very dry-looking reports, so here are the fun facts: 1,312 unicorns were reported globally (valuing $4.1T) and are up 24% since the latter half of '21. 13% of the startups of $500B or more are headquartered in San Francisco, and 71% of the VCs are founded in the U.S. (followed by 21% in China).
9. PPG: Grab your tech dictionaries, everyone! I have a new acronym for you: PPG or People Powered Growth. This is a derivative of Product-led growth consisting of a cross-functional team with customer- and non-customer-facing members. It's a People + Product partnership that develops and tests solutions searching for ways to scale human interactions/intervention with a product. Some examples of PPG companies are Drift, Dropbox, and Loom.
10. CASE STUDY: What does Product Market Fit look like? 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, and here is a case study on how Superhuman did it.

POD OF THE WEEK: Complimenting #7 above - insight from running a Content Program (or is that Product?) as a one-person team.