Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending January 24, 2020

SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK

Expansion: OK - this is a total deep dive. Expansion revenue costs pennies on the dollar vs net new customer acquisition costs and also demonstrates that a business can deliver increasing value to customers (and monetize that value!). On average 37% of new ARR bookings is attributable to cross sell/up-sell activities and improving retention or monetization can actually impact growth 2-4x more effectively than improvements in acquisition. (see slides 41-46 for the real nuggets). Tips on how to optimize this via renewal available here. But I really enjoyed reading this working example of what that means to a companies growth and revenues from a product perspective from the company Buffer.

PERSONALIZATION

As an add-on to above, personalization can reduces acquisition costs as much as 50% and 87% of companies see a lift in key growth metrics Here is a great article from Chart Mogul on the (modern day) personalization fundamentals.

MARKETING

From Kyle Tibbitts - Marketing lessons learned over more than a decade growing startups. It all starts with the Product - 'Great marketing emanates from a great product.'

VENTURE

Tomasz Tunguz takes a look at the health of the US Venture Market as we head into 2020. Even with an increase in scrutiny in 2019, it seems like we are still on a run and sentiment in the valley continues to be positive.

DEV SUPPORT

Your devs are the lifeblood of your tech business, so how best can organizations provide ways to optimize their developer support? Well check this State of Developer Report as a resource to get started - Two-thirds of the developers say maintenance of legacy systems and technical debt hinder improved productivity! TL;DR? Devs are problem solvers (but they generally don't want to talk to you) - understanding this should feed into how you design a support system for your products.

PRODUCTS

And speaking of products, want to build them faster? Hiten Shah has a great book for you on his 5 habits. It also has real-life examples of how different tech companies practice these habits.

SEO

This is an oldie but a goody: Want to know how Zapier grew their business leveraging SEO - here is the case study. TEASER: It kinda involves them building 25,000 seperate landing pages (no I didn’t accidentally type to many zeroes)

ONBOARDING

It’s something I’m deeply into right now. This is how ZenDesk do it and ChartMogul have a version to

OKR’s

Pioneered by Google a few years back, OKR’s have emerged as a part of the suite of modern product and company best practices (that include Lean, Agile and Jobs-To-Be-Done frameworks). Heavybit have a great article on steps to get started for the first time within your organization.

SALES

A great primer from our friends at Lighter Capital. Sales cycles, commission rates, models, and metrics all explained (with best practices)