Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending November 8, 2019

SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: TAM

(Total Addressable Market). This is the metric founders are commonly asked for that is designed to give a sense of the size of the prize for a business. It helps convince investors that a founder is chasing a venture-scale sized opportunity. It’s also a metric that in my opinion most get incredibly wrong. Look for Bottom Up our Value based sizings. It is unrealistic for a company to capture the entirety of a TAM with their business or product, so building a narrative around what (within that TAM) is obtainable sets great expectations (and shows a deep understanding of the market) - called TAM-TOM-SOM. Here are some great examples of TAM

RETAIL 5/5

The future of retail is tech-centric and Business Insider are providing a 5 part series on the future of retail (2020 edition) In this final part of the series it covers the big Elephant in the eCommerce room- Amazon.

MICRO VC’s

Here is a master list of sub $100m USD VC funds!

CADENCE

I bang this drum fairly regularly Top tech companies are top performers in-part due to the fact that they operate at a cadence that is faster than most. It’s all about execution and heartbeat, which requires a fierce focus and prioritization . First Round Capital also have their take on speed.

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE

Great article from Capiche on how SaaS has revolutionized the idea of enterprise software via a well-worn “Bottoms up” model (SMB -> Mid -> Enterprise growth strategies). This Consumerization of business software is demonstrated by a recent study by Okta, who showed that the number of apps in use has increased by 68% for large companies and 43% for small and mid-size companies since 2015.

PLG

Product Led Growth is a strategy in use by many successful SaaS companies for years. I’ve referenced it plenty in past newsletters. From ChartMogul here is the PLG Sales best practices to compliment the marketing Cheat Sheet I referenced in a recent newsletter. Also don't forget that OpenView have launched a Product Led Growth Maturity Grader - this tool is designed to give feedback on how far along your organization is on the PLG maturity spectrum.

CYBERSECURITY

Threats are on the rise, as is the adoption rates of apps and products within large organizations. It’s a perfect storm of real risk that needs solid, strategic approaches to management. This article from McKinsey offers a risk-based approach to managing overall modern-day cyberrisk exposure.

SOCIAL MEDIA

It’s modern-day maturity is reflected in its domination by just a handful of companies (who are under some pretty hard scrutiny at present and saying ludicrously lofty things). The Information focus this article on a number of neo-social-networking startups (I totally just made that term up) that have emerged on the scene hoping to gain traction by focusing on how young people like to communicate.

NETWORKING

Relationships are a major currency in the tech world, and learning to network like a local in the Valley requires practice and determination. First Round Capital have a great article on best practices, of course, we do too.

IoT

Current and future IoT applications are a major driver of cloud computing and so it’s no surprise that Microsoft announced last week that they will pour $5 billion into IoT over the next 4 years, all on top of Azure and here is their current summary of IoT based research.