Product Led Growth (PLG) is a go-to-market strategy that relies on product usage as the primary driver of acquisition, conversion and expansion. Learn why we're now in the end user era and how your org can adapt.

1. PRODUCT LED GROWTH
Building a PLG foundation for unicorn growth.
Kyle Poyar, VP of Growth at OpenView
SaaS Camp 2021

2. IT USED TO BE HARD TO
ADOPT NEW SOFTWARE

3. LOTS OF PEOPLE AND TIME
Long sales
process
Complex
implementation
Training &
certification

4. NOT ANYMORE

5. SOFTWARE JUST KINDA SHOWS UP

6. END USERS ARE FINDING
THESE PRODUCTS

7. AND TELLING THEIR BOSS
WHICH ONES TO BUY

8. THE END USER ERA
IS HERE

9. AND THE BEST SAAS COMPANIES
RECOGNIZE IT
S-1 Filing
We recognize that users
drive the adoption and
proliferation of our products.
Bottom-up adoption within
organizations has been critical to
our success as users increasingly
choose their own tools at work.
S-1 Filing
We grow through viral demand
driven by individual users.
S-1 Filing

10. Everything we buy starts with a little project at the edge of the
organization. Some developers tinkering with something. A couple of
salespeople, a couple of marketers, and then it ends up on the CIO’s
desk. Software buying has been turned on its head, and you
need to market and sell to humans and enable those humans
to put it to work for you.
1
0
BRIAN HALLIGAN
Co-Founder and CEO
HubSpot

11. PRODUCT LED GROWTH IS
HOW YOU ADAPT
Product led growth (PLG) is an end user-focused growth
model that relies on the product itself as the primary
driver of customer acquisition, conversion and expansion.

12. EVEN SERVICENOW IS
GOING ALL-IN ON PLG (1)

13. EVEN SERVICENOW IS
GOING ALL-IN ON PLG (2)

14. EVEN SERVICENOW IS
GOING ALL-IN ON PLG (3)

15. Appeal to
end users
Price comes
after value
Measure
everything
Customer
success before
sales
FOUR STEPS TO
PRODUCT LED GROWTH

16. Executive
Pain
We need to manage
our sales pipeline.
End User
Pain
I hate scheduling
meetings.
“ “
APPEAL TO END USERS

17. I hate expense reports.
So annoying!
I hate file sharing.
So annoying!
I hate internal emails.
So annoying!
I hate scheduling.
So annoying!
I hate web conferencing.
So annoying!
I hate post-it notes.
So annoying!
ANNOYANCE IS OPPORTUNITY

18. THIS EVEN HAPPENS IN SECURITY
• “I hate being slowed
down by security” –
every developer
• Snyk puts security into the
software development
pipeline so developers
can catch security issues
quickly and take control of
their products

19. MAKE IT EASY TO GET STARTED –
END USERS DEMAND SELF SERVE
Request Demo
Contract Order Form
Configuration Implementation
Training Support Tickets
Talk to Sales Sign Up Ts & Cs
Automated Onboarding
Documentation Knowledge Base
Bots Community
SSO
End users hate this End users love this

20. YOU NEED TO FIND SCALABLE
WAYS TO REACH THOSE USERS
• Word of mouth/virality
driven by great user
experiences
• SEO, especially Product
SEO where you get found
in the moment the user is
solving their problem
• Partners including 3rd
party app stores
Data from HubSpot Q3 Investor Presentation

21. VIRALITY/WORD OF MOUTH IS A
GREAT PLACE TO START
External virality through
product exposure
Internal virality through
collaboration and
network effects

22. ZAPIER SCALES PRODUCT SEO
• Three tiers of landing pages –
page for every app, every
app-to-app integration, and
every app-to-app workflow
• Allows users to seamlessly sign-
up and start using the product
from the landing page
• Generates >7M visitors
each month including 53%
from organic search
Data from Reforge

23. HUBSPOT STARTED WITH ITS
WEBSITE GRADER

24. DON’T FORGET 3RD PARTY
AUDIENCES
• Shopify has 1M+ merchants
who generate $60B+ GMV
• The app store has attracted
4,000 total apps
• Klaviyo – Raised $200M
Series C at a $4B valuation
• Yotpo – Raised $75M Series
E at a “near unicorn”
valuation

25. Paywall before
“aha!” moment
PRICE COMES AFTER VALUE

27. A FREE OFFERING IS TABLE STAKES
Data from OpenView 2019 SaaS Benchmarks Survey
PLG Companies
All SaaS Companies
Free trial Product analytics Self-service
buying
Bottoms-up sales Product qualified
leads
Referral
programs
Dedicated
growth FTEs
Freemium

28. FREEMIUM VS. FREE TRIAL
Data from OpenView 2020 Product Benchmarks

29. IDEALLY YOU CAN DO BOTH

30. FRICTION ISN’T AN EXCUSE TO
GATE YOUR PRODUCT
Data from OpenView State of Product Led Growth Survey (N=500)
Free
Version
No Free
Version
Product can be
used practically
immediately.
There is some
friction to start using
the product.
There are extensive
requirements
before the product
can be used.
41% 52% 7%
14% 59% 27%

31. CUSTOMER SUCCESS BEFORE SALES

32. OFFER THE RIGHT EXPERIENCE AT
THE RIGHT TIME

33. USE PRODUCT DATA TO SELL
Track PQLs and their
funnel conversion
Don’t track PQLs, but
it’s on our roadmap
23%
32%
45%
Don’t track PQLs

34. SALES = CUSTOMER EXPANSION
55% of customers who
spend $100k+ started
with one free user

35. LEARN FROM PATTERNS THAT LED
TO SUCCESS IN THE PAST

36. MEASURE EVERYTHING
Set up a PLG tech stack
Define activation
Run in-product experiments
Keep tabs on user cohorts

37. THE PLG TECH STACK
CRM
Old New
Product analytics
Call recording Session recording
Dialers In-app chat & guides
Contracts Self checkout
Win-loss User testing

38. WTF IS USER ACTIVATION?

39. 20-40% ACTIVATION IS NORMAL
Data from OpenView interviews with leading freemium PLG companies in and out of the portfolio

40. GUIDE USERS TOWARD ACTIVATION

41. GROWTH TEAMS CATALYZE CHANGE
Data from OpenView State of Product Led Growth Survey (N=500)
Rarely or never run
experiments
Occasionally run in-
product experiments
Almost always running
1+ experiment
21%
27%
52%
55%
26%
20%
Growth Team No Growth Team

42. DO YOU WANT TO BE LIKE
THESE COMPANIES?

43. S-1 filing
S-1 filing S-1 filing
S-1 filing
S-1 filing S-1 filing
THEY’RE ALL IN ON
PRODUCT LED GROWTH
Employees are increasingly
empowered to “bring your own
software,” leading to the user-
driven viral adoption of new
software products.
As free hosts realize the benefits of
our platform, they often subscribe
to a paid plan to gain access to
additional functionality.
The Shopify platform provides
merchants with an intuitive user
experience that requires no up-
front training to implement and
use. Merchants can set up their
shop in less than 15 minutes.
People love using Slack and many
become advocates for wider use
inside of their organizations.
As individuals increasingly
choose their own tools at work,
purchasing power has become
more decentralized.
We put a commercial transaction
after the customer is experiencing
success with our products. We call
this "inverting the traditional
enterprise sales model."

44. THE PLG IPO WAVE IS BUILDING

45. BETTER PERFORMANCE POST IPO

46. THE END USER ERA
IS HERE

47. THANKS!