The weekly top 10 for B2B tech operators · Every Friday
Retention. Long-term retention is the foundation of sustainable product growth. Retention is viewed differently in different industries. Gaming companies have 1, 7 and 30-day retention rate metrics, and user pilot have a conference (you may have missed it already if this is no longer Friday for you) on how to increase customer retention within b2b SaaS.
SaaS Businesses have been on a bull market for over a decade and it’s all been about growth and not necessarily profits. A16z make the case that to weather this pandemic storm and the new future, SaaS companies should be focused on efficient growth strategies and metrics. NfX compliments this discussing teh new rules of the historic tension in SaaS of Growth vs Profitability.
Adding another layer onto #2 above. Startup Genome has uncovered a very pragmatic growth vs Profitability metric globally: 41% of all global startups have less than 3-month cash runway (and this is a pre-Covid-19 metric)
Great report from Business Insider - their analysis of how the Coronavirus pandemic will impact global fintech funding. It’s pretty bleak - Fintech funding was down from $11 billion in Q4 2019 looking to close at just $6 billion in Q1 2020. The bright spot in this sector being digital investment and savings platforms businesses will still manage to see increase investment demand, while alt lender businesses will struggle.
Consumer and Business Subscription businesses have been seeing success over the past few years - recurring revenue-based business models being able to leverage digitally enabled, pay-as-you-go tools and have seen a 350% for the past seven years. So how are these businesses being impacted by COVID-19? According to this report from Zuora - most of them are actually doing OK - 53.3% not seeing any impact to be exact. But almost a quarter (22.5%) are actually seeing their growth numbers accelerate.
I love myself a good transparent (warts and all) SaaS growth story. This one is a keeper from Tom Hunt on how ConvertKit took a very wobbly path over 5 years to eventually unlock $1.7m MRR.
Optimizing a User Experience is key to the long term success of any service or product. Google is all over this and just launched Web Vitals, a program that offers developers guidance about user experience. It’s benchmarking very Google based metrics: loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
Very much front of mind for many of us right now - how the heck do I forecast through uncertainty? (my head is nodding!). Chartmogul has a great article with some motivating advice for you.
One of the sessions I attended every year at SaaStr was the Bessemer Venture Partners, State of the Cloud Report. It was a fantastic deep dive into micro and macro trends, forecast and predictions. This year SaaStr was Covid-Cancelled but don't worry - I found the Cloud edition (you’re welcome). This is a Three-part publication. So set aside some time, grab some coffee and check it out. TL;DR - teh future of work is remote, privacy debt is the new technical debt, API universe will drive innovation across industries.
A couple of years ago a really inspiring and memorable (you know in one of those cute handwritten animation styles) videos circulated describing the Agile Squads that Spotify employs in its apparently cooler than cool Utopian Developer department. Well, guess what, sorry to burst your Spotify bubble, but they abandoned it. (How Agile of them)…. In this port mortem assessment, the biggest key failure was such a SaaS-based one: It was solving the wrong problem.
BONUS: Virtual festivals are everywhere - and here is one for Sales people: Sales Enablement Collective coming up May 12-15.
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