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Do you believe in Product-led growth?
There are many ways of growing a business.
Traditionally, businesses would focus their effort on sales.
Eventually, marketing became the most popular and efficient way to do it.
Then, we saw the rise of SaaS and product-led growth was a thing, focusing on UI and UX. This latter one being deeply connected to customer-led growth and the rise of customer success.
Which one do you believe in? Which one fits your line of business best?
Have you focused on one or is it a combination of them all?
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Product led growth can bring Amazing growth for SaaS products. But only if done right:
- seemless onboarding
- frictionless self served experience
- tangible value of the product asap
- low learning curve.
- viral potential.
But from what I have seen it, in B2B SaaS, it can only take you up to a certain level of revenue.
Then comes time to go « upmarket » more often than not (especially if the startup raises funds) and so for midcap or enterprise, the transition to product led sales to accommodate the needs of these clients
@toni_pm Absolutely! Creating a product able to carry a product led growth is the ultimate challenge. I think it's important to be careful not to be too stubborn and fall in a vicious trap in that quest, forgetting about your revenue.
@toni_pm Really interesting point on the lifecycle. Do you mean that PLG can help you take off, but then marketing or sales are here to help you scale it?
@florian_meffre from what I have witnessed it is a matter of who you want to address and how much or how fast you want to grow.
But reaching a certain point, you ll probably pivot to product led sales to grow beyond.
Ex ChatGPT grew insanely fast. But reaching a certain peak to go beyond, they need to address the enterprise needs and those won’t close a deal without sales involved
Yes! Absolutely!
We are example (www.flowmapp.com):
$0.6M ARR, bootstrap, 300k users, over 200 countries, 6 years of development, no sales, organic, 0$ venture capital, 0$ marketing.
100% PLG strategy.
I'm all about finding that sweet spot between product-led and customer-led growth.
When your product genuinely solves a customer's problem, it's a perfect match.
On the flip side, focusing solely on product features to grow and capture the market doesn't get you very far if it doesn't tackle real issues.
@pointae Totally agree with you on this. I think it's the perfect balance as well and that's what I'm aiming for. Thanks for the input! 🙌
I believe it deeply and my product also proved this method. I think the most important thing for a startup is the product, whether it is a tech company or traditional company. Product is always the first thing.
@shivangiawasthi Did you succeed with this strategy with some product of yours? I'd love to hear more :)
When it works, it's magical
But it's not that often that a product is truly well suited to it
@matthewsuperflows Indeed! I reckon we ought to be really careful not to make the mistake to dig this strategy too deep and against the nature of your product or business..
Both, focus on marketing/sales and your product. You can have both it's just the balancing is hard for founders
@relja_denic Balance is always wise and sounds pretty good. It's just that we're always pushed to focus and choose and bet on a strategy. And because one cannot always afford to diversify or pursue several at the same time, especially at the start of your journey.
Yes, because it allows users to experience value firsthand, driving adoption and feedback, vital in today's SaaS market.
Launching soon!
I think it depends on the product and sector. I think to start you need to plan which you'd prefer but if you're not getting the visibility with a PLG approach and you're looking to land Enterprise level clients - it might be time to hit the phones and take more of a blended SLG+PLG approach. Keep more irons in the fire and lean into what you think is best but don't be scared to pivot.
We're huge believers in product-led growth at Graphite - the vast majority of our paying customers started with 1-5 engineers who initially found Graphite, and then shared it with their colleagues and adjacent teams until they hit the limits of our free tier. This bottom-up, product-led growth motion lets us land and expand within established companies in far less time than it would take for them to make a top-down eng purchasing decision, and without needing to invest in a massive sales org. Obviously as we scale we'll need to build out a sales function to serve enterprise customers, but even then we intend to use our self-serve growth motion to keep our sales efficiency high!
Skylead