Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 27, 2024

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: What KPIs do venture firms consistently care about across stages? This article highlights how KPIs evolve from early traction metrics like CAC and LTV to more advanced indicators like NRR as companies scale and also shifting into survival metrics like cash runway to operational efficiencies.


2. PATTERNS: The Data-Driven VC looked late last year at what data patterns can be analyzed across successful startups. Super interesting read, but TL;DR: most important is the number of executives, the split of business versus tech roles, the split of male versus female founders, and their age and degrees.


3. GROWTH: There are so many nuggets in one little post that summarizes the ChartMogul SaaS Retention Report mentioned in the newsletter a couple of weeks back. SaaS growth slowed in 2024 as it's harder to come by, and expansion is driving 40% of ARR growth for companies with $15M-$30M ARR (it was 30% in H1 21). Achieving 100%+ NRR is harder as subscriber counts grow. Good retention is key.


4. GTM: Earlier this month was the SaaStr Annual Conference, and during the event, Tomasz Tunguz the Theory Ventures team launched their 2024 Go-to-Market Survey results (you can also download the PDF here). This new annual survey looks at the state of SaaS sales and marketing strategies. Some super interesting observations: The perceived gains of AI are high, but that hasn't translated into conversion rates (yet); sales cycles are lengthening (with a median sales cycle now 12 days longer, which has a knock-on effect for payback periods, which are up by 12% average.


5. SALES TRANSITION: Moving from founder-led to AE-led sales? This article from Bain Capital Ventures makes the case that it's all about the "MVP/ICP Handshake." Nailing the alignment between your Minimum Viable Product and your Ideal Customer Profile is a crucial step. Without this, bringing in AEs too early can stunt growth (which has been seen time and time again in startup land). Solidify the customer segmentations and product-market fit before even thinking of adding a sales force.


6. FUNDING: According to CrunchBase, August was a slow one for Venture, hitting the lowest point of the year, with $18 billion raised (a 36% MoM decline and a 23% drop from August last year). AI and healthcare remain the leading sectors, propping everything else up, with AI companies alone raising $4.3 billion. North American startups scored 66% of the total funding, continuing to dominate, but any kind of exits or IPOs remain sluggish.


7. PRODUCT-MARKET FIT: A long-running general rule (called a Growth-ism) in the Startup world is that getting to $1m of ARR is a strong sign of Product Market Fit (PMF). Kaitlyn Henry from Openview runs contrary to this Growth-ism, stating that there's no specific revenue indicator that defines PMF, but she also continues to write about concrete signals of PMF available beyond a $$ amount and gut feel. Read more about all those signals here. This sits well with Brian Balfour's work, who wrote an amazing article on the subject that is now almost 10 years old and still incredibly relevant for figuring out what stage(s) you may be at.


8. JTBD: Jobs to be Done is one of my favorite frameworks - it's a way to make the process of innovation accessible and tangible in very pragmatic ways. Take a light read here on a lightweight JTBD framework - broken down with real-world business examples; you can also skip straight to the templates. Or go for the more comprehensive one here (that also has a template). Theory Ventures 2024 Go-to-Market Survey.


9. CONVERSION LESSONS: After reviewing 20,000 website conversion experiments, Kyle Poyar and co from Growth Unhinged's show that less is more. Simple, clean designs beat complex features like social proof, homepage videos, and strikethrough pricing, which often hurt rather than help conversions. If you're looking to improve site performance, keep it chill!


10. CASE STUDY: Ok - looking at #7 above - what could Product Market Fit experientially look like? Asking the PMF question, in my opinion, is always the nobler focus (as opposed to being focused on answering the question). But sometimes - you just gotta know! So here is a case study on how Superhuman did it. 


POD OF THE WEEK: It's a bit of a long one (coming in at almost 2 hours) - but SEO is changing fundamentally (and it's something I find quite fascinating and also equally annoyed by), so Lenny's Podcast interviews Eli Schwarts (an SEO consultant)covering how to re-think SEO in the age of AI.