# Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending December 20, 2024

Published: 19 December 2024
Canonical: https://www.top10in.tech/posts/week-ending-december-20-2024

**Welcome to the last Newsletter of the year. We will be taking a couple of weeks off - have a great Holiday Season, and see y'all in January!**

## 1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK

Product KPIs: Check out [Jason Cohen's playbook for Product KPIs](https://longform.asmartbear.com/product-metrics/), which maps out how to select KPIs that truly matter. This framework (with a [great visualization here](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/r4p5hndr8vr5mvnp98ngi/Product-KPIs.svg?rlkey=8yfgbjk2l0hn2ttnga9cv5wlt&dl=0)) focuses on aligning KPIs with roles, like adoption rates for execs, conversion paths for strategists, or churn for customer-facing teams. Tactical advice includes separating leading indicators (like sign-ups) from lagging ones (like LTV) and ensuring metrics align with business goals for actionability.

Link: https://longform.asmartbear.com/product-metrics/

## 2. GO TO MARKET

Go-to-market motions can be quite specific and your GTM motions can [impact your marketing strategy and your org chart](https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/gtm-motion). In this article, Robert Kaminski has [distilled GTM motions into five types](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heyrobk_the-use-cases-are-endless-founders-use-activity-7153041418435854336-c8Y6/)based on a number of use cases. The summary[diagram](https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4E22AQFXFiR9Rt99kA/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0/1705417969822?e=1708560000&v=beta&t=fN0vSjpd3hta2Lz10BiO61uj0SGNw26JgI-_yyOvBhA) at the bottom is great.

Link: https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/gtm-motion

## 3. ZERO-OPS

A new entry for your tech dictionary, [ZeroOps is a set of practices that result in developers focusing solely on coding](https://cloudgeometry.io/blog/the-zeroops-journey-mind-the-gap/) and creating, with 0% of their time spent on operations or [infrastructure](https://www.amazee.io/blog/post/what-is-zeroops).

Link: https://cloudgeometry.io/blog/the-zeroops-journey-mind-the-gap/

## 4. SCALE

The SAAS CFO has a great read and SaaS Metrics Playbook that outlines a [Five Pillar framework](https://www.thesaascfo.com/scaling-with-confidence-the-ultimate-saas-metrics-playbook) for scaling confidently. TL;DR Growth (New ARR and Expansion ARR), Retention (GRR and NRR), Margins (gross margin by stream), Financial Profile (balancing growth and profitability), and Sales Efficiency. .[https://www.thesaascfo.com/scaling-with-confidence-the-ultimate-saas-metrics-playbook](https://www.thesaascfo.com/scaling-with-confidence-the-ultimate-saas-metrics-playbook)

Link: https://www.thesaascfo.com/scaling-with-confidence-the-ultimate-saas-metrics-playbook

## 5. ASYNC CULTURE

Crack open your tech dictionaries again for this one - it's something we do at my day job that we are trying to get better at; I just wasn't aware there was a label for it. With 100% remote and distributed teams across different time zones, management and leadership can get very out of sync. So, [this is a great Async playbook](https://review.firstround.com/the-secret-to-an-in-sync-startup-ditch-your-meetings-and-try-an-asynchronous-culture) for those who need to practice this. It's actually on my wall.

Link: https://review.firstround.com/the-secret-to-an-in-sync-startup-ditch-your-meetings-and-try-an-asynchronous-culture

## 6. FIRST PRINCIPLE THINKING

This phrase has been thrown around a lot in recent years, so do you want to be more like old-school Elon (the one without all the DOGE/Trump drama)? Read here on the concept of [First Principles Thinking](https://fs.blog/2018/04/first-principles). In addition, [here is a full guide/website](https://fpt.guide/).

Link: https://fs.blog/2018/04/first-principles

## 7. AI CHIPS

Late last month, Amazon announced it's in the [AI Chip race](https://qz.com/chatgpt-meta-nuclear-power-amazon-jeff-bezos-nvidia-ai-1851714836) - the AI wars are taking on [a new layer](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/technology/nvidia-ai-chips.html) with the big Public cloud Players, [Apple](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-is-working-on-ai-chip-with-broadcom), [Broadcom](https://www.investors.com/news/technology/broadcom-stock-avgo-stock-massive-ai-chip-opportunity/), and [governments](https://www.wsj.com/tech/u-s-prepares-new-ai-chip-restrictions-to-close-chinas-backdoor-access-a598d0fc) getting involved.

Link: https://qz.com/chatgpt-meta-nuclear-power-amazon-jeff-bezos-nvidia-ai-1851714836

## 8. QUANTUM

Google is taking the high road with the AI Chip wars above by focusing on Quantum and has [a new quantum chip, Willow](https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/), which marks a bonkers leap in compute power. It completed a computation in under five minutes that would have taken the world's fastest supercomputer 10 **septillion** years (that's 25 Zeros - older than the known universe).

Link: https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/

## 9. GROWTH

Kyle Poyar's gives us "[The Best Growth Advice of 2024](https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/the-best-growth-advice-of-2024)" with a great end-of-year summary of practical tips. TL;DR takeaways include Jam's 18-month persistence to perfect retention, Rows' email validation boosting conversions, and Folk's white-glove onboarding driving a 4x increase in success rates.

Link: https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/the-best-growth-advice-of-2024

## 10. CASE STUDY

Adding onto #6 above, here is how [First Principle Thinking can be applied IRL - in this example, towards a Product Lead Growth business](https://productled.com/first-principles-of-a-successful-product-led-growth-strategy).

Link: https://productled.com/first-principles-of-a-successful-product-led-growth-strategy

## POD OF THE WEEK

Wrapping up 2024 with a [Google notebook LLM Podcast version](https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/50dd2f78-f4f5-4b5e-9440-ad1204171d43/audio) of this Newsletter.

Link: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/50dd2f78-f4f5-4b5e-9440-ad1204171d43/audio