The Daily Index — Wednesday, October 11, 2023 · TLDR Index

HEADLINES & TRENDS

TLDR Founders

TLDR Founders

VC RETURNS ARE AT A 10+ YEAR LOW

We can’t say we’re surprised. Down rounds, inertia in the IPO market, and climbing rates of administrations were always going to impact VC returns. The second order impact of this is that LPs are likely going to be a little hesitant giving GPs fresh capital, which impacts the amount of funding available for startups.

saastr.com · 1 min

TLDR Founders

M&A MAKES A STRONG COMEBACK IN THE DACH REGION

The absence of growth funding in the DACH region has been replaced with healthy M&A. The number of M&A transactions in the region has increased from 153 in H1 2022 to 235 in H1 2023, a 54% increase. Last month LeanIX was acquired for a reported €1.2bn by software giant SAP in one of Germany’s biggest ever tech acquisitions.

sifted.eu · 3 min

TLDR Founders

SELLING IN STEALTH, CATEGORY CREATION AND EXPANSION

Ryan Lieber was the 40th hire at Snowflake back in 2014 when it was still in stealth. Starting as an SDR, he’s since worked on country expansion and program management. This piece explores the challenges of building a category-creating business and a few lessons learned selling along the way: the optimal SDR:AE ratio, pipeline health checks, and involving engineers in sales calls.

akashbajwa.substack.com · 18 min

TLDR Founders

TIPS FOR GATHERING PRODUCT FEEDBACK

Customers don’t really know what they want. Very few of them are able to envision and articulate new product ideas. Instead of asking them what they want, ask them more about their problems. The solution will start to become more apparent.

breakingpoint.tech · 4 min

TLDR Founders

11 YEARS OF SAAS PRODUCT STRATEGY

Reflections on Tanda’s transition into a multi-product company, with key takeaways including the value of diversifying products, adjusting ineffective features, and prioritizing customer-driven demand.

ghiculescu.substack.com · 7 min

TLDR Founders

GOING FROM DEVELOPER TO CEO

You’re either a builder or a seller right? This is a rundown from an engineer who turned into a founder and then switched to the business side of the operation. The biggest takeaway is how the move meant they ended up juggling lots of work streams and had to get good at fast context switching.

newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com · 14 min

TLDR Founders

THE TOP METRICS FOR USAGE-BASED SAAS

Usage-based billing seems to be growing in popularity. How do you know if it’s working? Here are the 14 top metrics you should be keeping an eye on.

mostlymetrics.com · 13 min

TLDR Founders

ON GETTING IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

As founders, we’re sometimes perfectionists. Get comfortable with the fact that the first version is never the final version. Doing something great is a series of iterations.

seths.blog · 1 min

TLDR Founders

SELLING INTO THE FUTURE

To win a government contract, Fairchild Semiconductor quoted products significantly below market rate. It did this because it was confident that over time its manufacturing costs would come down significantly. Is there something we can learn from this and apply to selling AI products? Compute costs will no doubt come down, chips will get better, and hardware will improve.

matt-rickard.com · 1 min