Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 2, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: EARLY STAGE BENCHMARKS - Metrics are only good if you know what to benchmark yourself against, and Chartio has a list of 20 benchmarks for Growing Startups, all handily broken down by department (such as Sales, Marketing, Product, Revenue) to make sure that the business is ready for scale.


2. PRICING SENSITIVITY: I post about pricing a lot (because a 1% increase in price can generate up to an 11% increase in your profits). So this week, let's take a more nuanced approach by looking at priced-based sensitivity - a measure of the percentage of sales you will lose or gain at any particular price point relative to another lower or higher price point. Profitwell can explain it much better - so take a read of their article about how to measure and optimize it (check the Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter")


3. UNSHIPPING: Here is another term for your Tech Dictionaries now that we have all poured one out for Internet Explorer - how can you and your team decide when to unship something? Check here - an excellent article covering this topic from Reforge with evaluation criteria and real-world examples from Slack and Mixpanel.


4. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: Requires outstanding leadership - here is an interview with the Head of Growth at Reddit and the Head of Product at Twitter on how to create a good vision and strategy.


5. VENTURE: This week is a look at Silicon Valley Bank's biannual State of the Markets Report for H1 2022. Tech talent shortages, inflation pressures, and supply chain delays remain serious operational headwinds for startups. On the flip side, there is still an abundance of capital (about $228B in dry powder) - which could fuel growth as long as the money is affordable. SVB forecast Series A deals to break 2,000 (1,526 in 2021). This is in line with observations in the Wilsons Sonsini report discussed last week.


6. DEMO: I love a good demo (who doesn't?), and for me, Demos play a pivotal role in our sales process to demonstrate and discuss the value we can bring. The team at Content Beta analyzed a bunch of Product demo videos (100+) and reported back on places where these videos went wrong, so yours don't have to.


7. BUDGET (PLG): Guess what everyone? It's friggin' September. a) How did that happen? b) It will be EOY before we know it, which means EOFY for many. Time to get next year's budget drafted, circulated, revised, completed, and Board approved! Don't panic. I have an article for you to read to understand better how businesses allocate their resources (based on interviews with over 600 SaaS startups).


8. AI: According to McKinsey, in their Technology Trend Outlook report, businesses spent $165B on artificial intelligence tools last year, up 150% since 2018 ($66B). But according to this Gartner report, only 54% of AI projects make it from pilot to production.


9. DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: Contentsquare has released a pretty extensive Digital Experience Benchmark Report for 2022 (PDF version is here). There are massive amounts of insight here (based on 46+ billion global user sessions). Here are some highlights: Conversion rates increased by 27% YoY, 2.3% average conversion rate, 58% of all web traffic is mobile, and on average, 1 in 2 visitors are returning.


10. CASE STUDY: Everyone loves a good old Pivot story - here are 5: The Hidden Backstory of 5 Startup Pivots That Grew to $43B, including Lyft and Discord.


POD OF THE WEEK: There is always a first. And for this newsletter, it's a link to a Joe Rogan Podcast. He spent over 2 hours with Mark Zuckerberg, who used this podcast to announce the launch of Meta's new virtual reality headset at its Connect conference in October.