ProductLed Podcast

Hila Qu is the director of growth at GitLab, a developer platform. GitLab offers a powerful platform that enables developers, engineers, and teams to build, release, and deploy very efficiently. The company started as an open-source product, but it became a PLG business as it has the criteria to be one. Due to its large free user base, GitLab was able to launch a PLG motion. Data on how users utilize the platform also allowed them to understand which features they use and what behaviors indicate that they are likely to convert to potential PQ. Hila provides details on how she created all these from scratch to grow GitLab and gives the six steps to launch a PLG motion. Show Notes [00:47] What GitLab is and how they started the PLG motion [08:44] How existing sales motion works before getting into the PLG side of things [17:18] Aligning on the customer journey and funnel design [31:00] Organize the right teams the right way [36:07] Recommendations for infrastructure and tool stack dependent on company size [40:45] How to identify the highest ROI focus area for PLG efforts [46:28] Anticipating common challenges and building the PLG culture [49:56] Hila’s advice for starting a PLG motion  About Hila Qu Hila is a uniquely talented growth leader. Prior to her current role at GitLab, Hila worked at Acorns, a financial technology, and services company that specializes in micro-investing and robo-investing. At Acorns, she founded and developed the growth team into a 20+ member team, drove the customer base from 1M to over 4M, and launched two new product lines. Now at GitLab, she leads their growth product team that has since generated over $1.5M incremental ARR from growth product initiatives & experiments in just the first six months. Needless to say, Hila lives every day in the world of growth, retention, analytics, and products (some nights too). Link GitLab Profile Hila’s Linkedin

Torben Schulz is the founder and COO of Rows, a platform that allows users to create applications using only spreadsheet skills. Of course, not everyone can code, but everyone knows how to use a spreadsheet. From that idea, Rows was made. Its user-friendly interface as a web app makes it easier for people to automate data, create reports, enrich spreadsheets, and other functions. It is a server-based spreadsheet with integrations and web requests. Their mission at Rows is to make things efficient for the user to become more productive. Torben tells how this upgrade from existing spreadsheet software earned them 30,000 users in less than eight months.  Show Notes [00:40] An upgraded spreadsheet for the business-minded [04:30] A horizontal productivity tool in contrast with its vertical counterpart [09:35] Use cases: should you tackle things one at a time or all at once? [15:33] Looking through the selection stage of the main use case and double down on reporting [21:02] Improving virality to ensure user retention by revolving user experience around sharing [27:46] The people behind Rows who make the decisions and what to do next [34:39] Looking at user growth instead of monetization to focus on the right initiatives [37:01] Keep the resilience and discipline until you hit gold About Torben Schulz Torben Schulz is the founder and COO of Rows, a platform that allows users to create applications using only spreadsheet skills. He is a former management consultant, and being a solid spreadsheet user led him to build Rows. Links Rows Profile Torben’s LinkedIn

Elena Verna is the interim head of growth at Amplitude. This digital optimization system enables organizations to see and predict which combination of features and actions translates to business outcomes. Amplitude is the brain behind more than 45,000 digital products at over 1,000 enterprise customers and 23 of the Fortune 100, helping them innovate faster and smarter by answering the strategic question: “How do our digital products drive our business?” Discover how to apply the product-led framework to your career growth with Elena’s unique perspectives and insights. Show Notes [01:09] A quest to make an impact and how to make linear growth into an exponential curve [08:08] How listeners can replicate the framework to grow their careers [11:37] Select the winners by experiencing a lot of failures [13:53] When is it time to change one’s career path? [16:47] Implementation of growth principles: how to acquire, retain, and monetize [24:29] Focus on creating frameworks to solve problems instead of coming up with pointed solutions [32:07] The problem is that we’re afraid to actually publish solutions [36:01] Relevant topics that are worth communicating about [39:09] Where does Elena get all her ideas, food for thought, and concepts? About Elena Verna Elena Verna is the interim head of growth at Amplitude. Elena is a well-known legend in growth communities. She has co-created some of the most successful growth stories in the last decade, including Miro, Mongo DB, and Survey Monkey, and helped dozens of companies as an advisor, interim CMO, and head of growth. Links Amplitude Profile Elena’s LinkedIn Elena’s Twitter

Esben Friis-Jensen, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow, discusses how they bootstrapped to 7-figure ARR with a product-led approach. They emphasize the importance of UI/UX, customer feedback, and building a strong product. They share initial steps to scale the business, differentiate between SEM and SEO, and maintain customer focus. They also highlight the value of authentic marketing, testing messaging, and aligning it with customer needs. Lastly, they discuss the transition to a product-led company, simplifying teams, and managing growth.

Andy Mowat, CEO of Gated, is an expert in building sales and marketing engines for world-beating companies. Gated works with existing email setups, making it fast, simple, and effective to use. It also reduces inbox volume by an average of 43%, making your inbox more productive and peaceful. What’s even more exciting is that their teams are rooted in wellness and clear communication, which promotes the company’s overall healthy growth and success. Gated recently experienced a 30% month over month user growth, and Andy will explain the steps that led to this success. Show Notes [1:32] His goal is to help reduce the noise of emails.  [2:19] What are some of the first things that he did to build the user engine for his company?  [5:19] Social proof becomes one of the easiest ways to short-circuit any mental barriers. [7:26] How does he monitor things in his business?  [11:26] How did he build this 30% month over month user growth engine? [18:30] Start talking and listening to people. [32:58] Understanding users' criteria is beneficial.  [34:00] Customize your charity by allowing domains and allowing donations. [36:41] A recap of the top 5 things that he did to achieve 30% MOM About Andy Mowat Outside of emails, user engines, and such, Andy Mowat is an advisor to growing SaaS companies. His collection of Keanu gifs will completely shock you, not to mention his love for the outdoors and adventures. Andy is not only a team player but also a family man. He is loved by many, especially by his colleagues, who can vouch for his outstanding performance in his areas of expertise. Link Gated Profile Andy’s LinkedIn 

Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone, is with us today. She enjoys serving consumers with the best customer experience by creating products that suit their needs. OpenPhone is an app built for teams and individuals so they can level up and use their phones for business anywhere. It’s everything that you and your team need in a phone system! Daryna gives us an overview of how they were able to come up with this unique vision and how they skyrocketed from 0 to 1000 customers. Are you on the lookout for a business phone? If so, then catch her on the show and stay tuned for more. Show Notes [4:47] They want to be a part of an environment that is a lot more inspiring and that allows them to make progress. [5:50] The reason why they joined Velocity [6:47] Why did they initially give their product for free? [9:42] People should be getting value out of the product, so see if that’s true [12:54] They always knew that OpenPhone would ultimately end up being a product that starts with one person in the company and then scales to the whole team [19:26] One of the most fundamental lessons learned was that a lot of times you overcomplicate things unnecessarily. [23:17] Daryna shares some of the biggest milestones that they have achieved throughout the years [27:08] How were they able to build a team and what did that journey look like? [34:27] Biggest leadership mistakes and lessons learned from the presence of scale [35:57 Daryna’s advice on delegation, building a business, and scaling it up About Daryna Kulya Daryna Kulya is the COO and co-founder of OpenPhone. She was previously a product manager at Vidyard, where she helped to establish and grow Vidyard GoVideo (ViewedIt). She also worked at Deloitte's Digital Innovation Lab, and helped them with their prototypes and innovations. Back in 2014, she established Product Hunt Toronto, one of the city's largest product events and the world's first Product Hunt community-run meeting. But what’s more interesting is Daryna is adventurous. She loves hiking trails in her free time.   Link OpenPhone Profile Daryna’s LinkedIn

Ian Robertson is an innovative thought leader with undeniable skills in business strategy, employee development, software management, and product-led growth. He is currently the head of Product-Led Growth at Boomi and has spearheaded its transition from Sales-Led to Product-Led. Ian has proven himself to be a highly skilled and dedicated leader who always strives to bring out the best in his colleagues and the company. Today he’ll be sharing the big steps that Boomi had to implement during their sprint to achieve product-led growth. You’ll learn so much as we talked about, pricing strategies, operational efficiencies and customer satisfaction. Catch him in this episode and stay tuned for more.  Show Notes [1:18] What are the big steps that he had to take to be able to achieve product-led growth? [2:28] Boomi is the way to connect various endpoints in your digital ecosystem to create better business outcomes. [7:28] What did they cover during the two-week sprint? [16:12] When they started the sprint for PLG, was the pricing iteration in the works?  [28:09] If you bother to sign up for a trial, you should have a good trial experience.  [30:00] They can now use Boomi for all use cases, not just large use cases, and that allows them to win more deals to reduce the operational debt of having multiple integration platforms and sell more services. [31:34] We need to align the objectives of the team. About Ian Ian has directly led Boomi in terms of acquisition, operations, and automation of teams. He also established a global program management team to support the transition into the enterprise and other multi-organizational initiatives.Ian excels at all tasks and work assigned to him, and he strives to produce the highest quality work possible. He is not afraid of challenges and approaches each problem with new and creative solutions. Link Boomi Profile  Ian’s LinkedIn

Kevin Tate is the Chief Revenue Officer at Clearbit. His expertise lies in strategic marketing, specifically in eCommerce, enterprise SaaS, social media, digital marketing and the like. He has over 24 years of experience in the field and has led several go-to-market software professional services and hardware-enabled SaaS companies. In this talk, he explains how Clearbit boosted their product-led to a 5x pipeline as well as how the company creates a seamless experience for their corresponding prospects. There's a lot to dig into this episode. Tune in to find out. Show Notes [0:36] What brought Kevin to Clearbit? [1:56] Some of the big steps that he took in order to get to where he’s at [4:12] Kevin talks about MEL’s (marketing engages leads). [8:24] Creating the weekly visitor report  [11:06] What type of problem space do they want to help companies explore with these tools? [18:41] What metric do they use to reach out to people? [28:56]. How to further accelerate your pipeline growth? [31:19] Try to make your tools as accessible, available, and convenient as possible. [32:07] How can you identify the best person for your ICP and prioritize your best accounts better?  [34:07] The importance of having a portable segmentation approach [36:28] Kevin’s recommendations in nailing the company’s segmentation process About Kevin Kevin Tate is a charismatic leader who likes to work swiftly to adhere to the vision, mission, and goals of his company. With over 24 years of experience, Kevin is well-seasoned to help people fully succeed when they deep dive into the market. He is currently the Chief Revenue Officer of Clearbit, an investor, mentor, and business tycoon at heart. Links Clearbit Profile Kevin’s LinkedIn

Ognjen Bošković is Growth Lead at CXL, one of the strongest communities in the growth and marketing. He's also the founder of Executors, a community of growth experts driving real growth. In this interview, we will reveal why growth loops are the new funnels and how the CXL has become one of the strongest players in our field, relying on content marketing. Show Notes [2:45] How did your career lead you to CXL?  [7:53] From his experience, how does he balance his time and resources between content creation and content distribution? [13:39] Experimentation is key in figuring out what type of content are you looking for  [14:10] Consistent output is the secret to growth metric  [17:48] Product-led companies sometimes hesitate to invest in investing a lot into content marketing due to the perception that the ROI is insecure and it takes a while [21:49] Focus on building the growth model and understanding how things will grow. [23:33] The effect of doing proper content marketing is building one of the most secure modes you can build.  [27:20] Growth loops are what make the company grow fast [29:13] What are some of the super cases that excite him about growth loops?  [33:13] Advice on how people who are new to growth loops should approach growth loops? How can product-led companies manifest growth loops into their daily lives?  [34:15] Look for elements in your product that bring the most value to your users [38:51] How is the growth loop connected with the customer life cycle? About Ognjen Ognjen is the founder of Executors, a community for 5% of the growth experts that do the 95% of the work. He's obsessed with growth models and loops.  He's been responsible for growth at agencies, SaaS and education businesses. The mantra he follows is to do good work, document it and then distribute lessons learned along the way. Links ExecutorsCXL Profile Ognjen’s LinkedIn

Mark Roberge is a leader in the sales world. He is currently co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, the first venture capital firm run and backed by over 300 GTM executives. He is also a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. Prior to these roles, Mark served as founding CRO at HubSpot from $0 to IPO. He is author of best seller “The Sales Acceleration Formula” which became a guideline for start-up companies in growing their revenue and building a winning sales team.  He’s in the show to introduce to us his playbook which revolves around Product Led Growth for B2B startups. Get ready to learn some insightful lessons from this renowned industry expert.  Show Notes [0:44] On creating a playbook for his PLG startup  [3:32] The best of class teams have to set up a cross-functional team of marketing plus product and put it under the product [8:44] How category creation has become such an important part of entrepreneurship  [12:27] PLG tends to focus the organization on usage first as opposed to revenues [14:03] The reason why free user attention is the hardest metric  [14:49] Pro tip: Find a scalable, cost-effective way to generate users [16:35] Mark talks about the last part of the value metric, monetization  [18:42] You don’t start there as a seek funding business doing growth.  [19:42] What the best class engineerings do is specialize their engineering teams and product teams by roadmap to improve growth [21:22] Create your growth team to be cross-functional with both product engineering plus marketing capabilities [21:36] Set your company up to be data-driven rapid experimentation, an organization that focuses on the Northstar  About Mark Roberge As the SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for HubSpot, he has led hundreds of his employees on how to apply data technology and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand. Mark understands the ins and outs of marketing which is also a skill that he loves to share with others.  Links Hubspot The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge Profile Mark’s LinkedIn