Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending September 9, 2022

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: PQL vs. Activations. The try-before-you-buy approach to software subscriptions is the best way to get my money. This is pretty much what PLG is, so put away your SQL and MQL metrics for a second and focus on the newer cousin, PQL (Product Qualified Leads). PQLs track potential customers who have exhibited buying intent based on product interest and usage. Now you know that - measuring PQL vs. Activations are the two metrics to measure in unison.
2. EMPLOYEES: Here is a great question: How many employees should you have based on your ARR? David Sacks has a great slide from his SaaStr presentation on optimal SaaS Org Charts - Series A is 40-50 at 1m ARR. Yup, that's only $20-$25k ARR per employee - full report here which expands into what roles you should hire and what the org chart looks like.
3. REVENUE PER EMPLOYEE: As an operator, ask the real question to #2 above. What should my annual recurring revenue (ARR) be per employee? Here is the chart in one TL;DR visual, but if you want to read the whole article, you can check it out here and also here (PDF).
4. OPTIONS and ESOP: Talking of employees...Stock options are necessary for hiring and retaining the best talent in this hyper-competitive StartUp Land, so how can companies build an effective and compelling option plan? During a call not so long ago, I was referred to this great site that has compiled benchmark data, comprising over 20,000 option grants from more than 1,650 startups across the US and Europe sorted by Seed or Venture stage.
5. HAMBURGER MODEL: A Nom Nom one for the Tech Dictionaries this week. It's a modern go-to-market strategy in this PLG (Product Led Growth) SaaS era. The bottom bun is self-service PLG, and the top bun is enterprise sales. Your product is the meat in the middle. Want an example? Check this week's Case Study on Vimeo - 75% bottom Bun - 25% top bun.
6. CRYPTO: Massive Crypto event is happening later this month with Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in the metaverse, moving to a proof-of-stake network, which will result in a reduction of carbon emissions by 99%. TL;DR? This update will eliminate the "miners'" function in the Ethereum ecosystem, which significantly lowers network-based power demands.
7. CAPITAL: Good little nuggets from Carta's State of Private Markets for Q2 '22: The median capital raised in a seed round is $3M, Series A is $9M, and Series B is $20M.
8. CLOUD: I love the new quarterly cadence of Battery Ventures Cloud reports since they switched from annual starting this year. Take a read of the Q2 '22 version here. It covers a lot in just 42 slides: State of SaaS funding so far, ARR per employee benchmarks, valuations, and even Rule of 40 benchmarks.
9. DATA STACK: This is a cool one for those on the platform side covering the evolution of the modern data stack, mainly away from ETL (extract, transform, load) to ELT (extract, load, transform).
10. CASE STUDY: Figma came out of nowhere for me in 2022 to become one of my go-to daily platforms of use. The weird thing is that you have either very much heard of them, or you very much haven't. It's a great study in Community-Led-Product-Led-Growth (I totally just made that term up). First Round Capital has broken Figma's growth down (from stealth to enterprise) into 5 phases.

POD OF THE WEEK: With Yuriy Timen, former Global Head of Marketing and Growth at Grammarly, discusses the ever-changing world of growth, emerging growth tactics, and how to find your growth engine.