Does a company have to have a bottoms up approach to growth in order to be considered PLG?

You can deepdive on that through the various communication channels of productled.org. PLG Flywheel, PLG onboarding book, the PLG podcast etc. I would say, first, that a PLG GTM strategy does not exclude a sales motion, though having a sales only approach excludes you from being PLG. And second, that PLG does not exclude top-down but does favour bottom-up. The idea is that PLG is based on the fact that your product is delivering the value to your user/customer and not your sales. Therefore, in PLG the use of your product, through freemium, free trial or any usage possibility before purchase will provide your users the 'aha' moment to really value the solution you are providing. What this means for your sales cycle is that your clients become users instantly and will provide feedback (through analytics of reviews, etc.) that will benefit your own strategy or your sales, if you have them, to support your users to experience as much value from your solution as they can based on their own use case. Next to that, since your servicing users and not only paying clients, your sales strategy goes from a sales funnel (prospect, hunt, nurture, convert or lose) to a user flywheel that turn infinitely not based on the sales stage that prospect is in but in the value perceived by that user in your solution. You no longer stand in front of your client, you stand next to him supporting him as a cheerleader to make the most of it, because even if that person doesn't convert, he might as well know someone who will. which makes it a lot more effective if your product is available to all and not just a few. As a conclusion to your question, for me, is that - yes, it's a lot more effective to go bottoms up in PLG so that you can get as many users as possible that can convert afterwards - yes, (in most cases) you should combine your PLG motion with sales persons to get additional traction, attention and who can find and contact your Product Qualified Leads who will benefit the paid features Hope this helps. All the best! Cheers, Arthur