The 2019 Sales Tech Benchmark Survey
The 2019 Sales Tech Survey by Nancy Nardin is here. And it is a treasure trove of statistics you will do well to digest.
Path to future You
Do you believe you can do better? Do you have a picture of what life could be for you? Do you know who you need to be if you a want life like that? Every day is an opportunity to learn and prepare to get where you intend to go.
The Women Leaders in SAAS ( North Americas)
The Software Report has published the list of the Top 50 Women leaders in SaaS for 2019. It is comprehensive and provides a peek into the influence women have in the industry today. In most industry meets Women representation is low and one wonders why when you look at the breath of leadership roles they play in the wide variety of software companies.
Rethinking Disruption
What is disruption? Why are we so enamored by this word? Well it came into the tech lexicon possibly from Clayton Christensen’s classic – The Innovators Dilemma. One key point to be made is this : According to Christensen “new companies disrupt incumbents not when they introduce new technology, but when they help create new markets.”
Predicting Future
Predicting the future is a tricky business. With technology near term is still viable. Long term – science, fiction and magic all mesh up to create a haze. Still experts like Ray Kurzweil do exceedingly well ( see my post #16) getting upwards of prediction right over the span of multiple decades. So I look out for these and enjoy doing mental checks based on what I know (which is not much). Which is also why reading about 10 predictions by MIT Technology Review for 2017 in Inc by Jessica Stillman makes for an interesting reading.
Cold emails – what works?
Cold outreach response rates continue to plummet as buyers push back on unsolicited contacts. However practitioners are finding wide ranging success and Sales Hacker conducted a study about a year back and I found that hugely educative.
Are you listening?
Arguably one key attributes of a successful leader – political or otherwise is the ability of listening. Not just hearing but listening with a open mind with limited bias filters applied to our auditory function.
Negative Churn is the best indicator of Series A valuation
Tomasz Tunguz wrote this very brief post on the counter intuitive situation to find that negative churn or account expansion best co-relates to the valuation of a SAAS company during Series A. Not revenue or rate of growth of revenue.
Are you following Naval Ravikant?
I dug out this very readable profile of Naval Ravikant, written in October 2015, by Sarah Lacy, founder of Pando and Chairman Mom. That month Anglelist was announcing multiple initiatives including a $400m fund with CSC group from China, a vehicle for VC’s to engage early and a Tinder like app for individual jobbers.
How Technology impacted the world – 150 years in one chart
Barclays as a part of their Equity Guilt Study 2018 mapped how technology helped 30X World productivity between 1890 and 2013 keeping 1760 as base.
