ProductLed Podcast

Step into the world of product-led growth (PLG) with Wes Bush, the author of the popular book "Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself." In this episode, Wes talks about common misunderstandings about the product-led model and shares insights about its promising future. Dr. Else van der Berg, the founder of Sonderhouse, is also part of the conversation as a guest host. Together with Wes, they have a fascinating discussion, exploring the important idea of focusing on providing value before making money. They also talk about using product free trials, the need for organizations to change their thinking, and the complex task of making sure users find value in what's offered. Key Takeaways:  [1:00] How Wes Bush got into the product-led field [4:10] Four components of business [4:55} Comparing sales-led and product-led companies [6:00] Organizational and cultural shift to move to PLG [9:00] Balancing broad AI tools and targeting specific user profiles [11:50] Utilizing BJ Fogg’s behavior model for identifying ideal users [14:15] Potential for PLF targeting enterprise clients [17:15] Importance of value creation before value capture [17:50] Changing landscape of freemium [18:40] Future of PLG [22:00] Differentiation play, freemium in niche markets, and expanding target audiences [24:45] Mindset shift required for PLG success [27:00] Wes shares his biggest mistake in growth [30:30] Challenge of designing a core value proposition [35:15] Role and leadership skills for driving PLG initiatives [38:00] User success becomes the company’s success About Wes Bush:  Wes Bush is an author and expert in PLG and founder of the all-in-one educational platform ProductLed. With a passion for helping companies shift their focus from sales-led to product-led strategies, he believes that delivering value to users before monetization is key to success.  Links:  Wes Bush | LinkedIn Dr. Else van der Berg | LinkedIn  Free Product-Led Growth Book

The pressures of leadership can be tiring and steer you toward a version of yourself you don’t recognize. In today’s episode, we’re joined by Jason Silver, Growth expert and author of the upcoming book "Quietly Crushing It," who shares his insights on how to achieve success without burning out.  Jason highlights the importance of aligning your actions with your intentions and making room in your workday to prioritize tasks that bring you joy. He shares practical tips and introduces his “Crushing It” approach to enhance communication and productivity at work. This three-step framework involves creating space, aligning experiences, and progressing faster.  Key Takeaways:  [1:10] Jason Silver introduction  [2:30]  Importance of leadership and managing in a quieter, more fulfilling way [5:30] Technical skills in the product-led space  [9:00] Jason's interest in business and building teams  [12:00] The concept of "quietly crushing it" and finding joy in the hard things  [16:00] Work-life balance and the future of leadership  [20:00] Three-step “Quietly Crushing It” framework [24:00] Clear communication and the impact of miscommunications in the workplace  [30:00] How to implement a brief back to avoid miscommunications  [34:00] Jason’s “Quietly Crushing It” book About Jason Silver:  Jason likes to help people embrace life's challenges. He worked at Airbnb during the early days and helped build an AI company before AI became the cool thing to do. Currently, he advises leaders on how to build great, lasting companies with fulfilling workplaces.  Every Tuesday Jason shares a new article, always readable in under two minutes, that includes a tangible tactic you can use to help you do or feel better at work each week. Subscribe for free here.  Links:  Jason Silver | LinkedIn  “Quietly Crushing It” by Jason Silver

Enhancing customer value and boosting revenue can be achieved by integrating a sales assist motion into your PLG strategy. However, as we discover in today's episode of the False Starts series, this process requires navigating trial and error and overcoming challenges. Carrie McMahon, the Head of Scaled Business at Coda, talks about how her team navigated three iterations to find the right approach to adding sales to their successful self-serve motion. They started with a heavy focus on human interaction, then shifted to a success-led motion, and finally reoriented the team towards high-potential enterprise customers.  Throughout the episode, Carrie elaborates on challenges her team faced like overwhelming users with sales interactions. Among many nuggets of advice, she emphasizes the importance of pinpointing success milestones, strategically segmenting your customer base, and maintaining a continuous cycle of validation and automation. Key Takeaways: [1:15] Carrie’s background and work experience [3:30] Mission and ideal customer profile at Coda [6:20] Coda’s first attempt to layer sales on top of Coda’s PLG approach [7:15] Challenges of overwhelming the Sales Team with customer interactions and misaligned customer needs [8:10] Recognizing the mismatch between customer expectations and the sales-led motion [8:52] Ineffective segmentation of customers  [9:36] Pivoting towards a success-led motion [11:10] Discussion about the user experience during the initial attempt [12:50] Listening to customer feedback to understand challenges and missed opportunities [16:00] Transitioning from the first iteration to the second [16:15] Shifting the team’s focus from sales to success [19:50] Segmenting and finding the right users to engage with  [21:30] Examples of customer success stories and expansions [25:10] Creating transparency and celebrating quick wins [26:15] Focusing on potential growth for enterprise sales [28:15] Third iteration: reorienting towards high-potential customers [29:15] Product market fit discussion [29:45] Playbook recommendations for layering sales on self-serve [30:35] Evolution of product-led stack of tools [36:30] Team structure and objectives About Carrie McMahon:  Carrie is a collaborative leader and innovator with proven success at building and enabling teams and developing programs at scale to drive revenue growth and ensure operational efficiency. Prior to her role at Coda, she spent nearly 6 years working at Zendesk. Links:  Carrie McMahon | LinkedIn  Carrie McMahon | Coda 

In this episode, ProductLed CEO & Founder Wes Bush speaks with Laura Kluz, ProductLed’s Director of Content discuss the newly created Product-Led Assessment. The Assessment is designed to help businesses understand where to focus their efforts to build a successful product-led business. It measures nine core areas of a business, including strategy, ideal users, free model, onboarding, experience, pricing, data, growth process, and team. The assessment provides a holistic view of the business and helps identify the highest leverage opportunities for growth.  Learn why every business should take the Assessment to learn what the core issue is so that they can focus their time and resources on the right problems.  Key takeaways: [0:22]: What the ProductLed Assessment is [4:30]: Importance of understanding the root cause of business issues [7:00]: Breakdown of the nine components measured in the Assessment  [12:30]: Relevance of the Assessment for pre-revenue businesses  [17:00]: Plans for creating in-depth guides for each component  About Wes Bush Wes Bush is an exceptional entrepreneur, renowned bestselling author, and the unparalleled authority on product-led growth. With an unwavering dedication to his craft, Wes has transformed the lives of over 500,000 individuals worldwide, captivating them through his groundbreaking books, captivating podcast, and influential thought leadership on the subject of product-led growth. Links  Wes Bush on LinkedIn

Melissa Perri, the author of the book "The Build Trap" joins Wes Bush to talk about the concept of the build trap, which is when organizations become stuck measuring their success by outputs rather than outcomes. They chat about the importance of focusing on products' value rather than just shipping features. Melissa also shares the signs that indicate a company is in the build trap, such as not knowing the expected outcomes of their products and lacking a product strategy. Melissa provides insights on escaping the build trap, including the need for a good organizational design, a strong product strategy, and effective product operations. She emphasizes the importance of a cultural shift and the need to practice new behaviors to build a product-led culture.  Key Takeaways:  [3:00]: Discussion on the concept of the build trap and its scariness and signs that indicate a company is in the build trap.  [10:00]: How to address the build trap and escape it.  [18:30]: Importance of a cultural shift and practicing new behaviors.  [22:00]: What a simplified version of a strategy for early-stage companies looks like. [30:00]: Introduction to the concept of Product Ops and its importance for product-led companies  [39:00]: Why transparency matters in product-led companies.  [42:00]: Benefits of developing good habits early on in a company's growth.  Links:  Melissa Perri’s LinkedIn Melissa Perri’s Twitter productinstitute.com  melissaperri.com  produxlabs.com 

In this episode, Wes chats with Teresa Torres about her book, "Continuous Discovery Habits." Teresa is an expert in product discovery and has crafted a practical guide on continuously uncovering customer needs, pain points, and opportunities to build successful products. Wes and Teresa explore the key concepts of continuous discovery and the importance of forming product trios for effective collaboration. The podcast covers essential habits and strategies to kickstart a successful continuous discovery process, ensuring teams remain focused on achieving desired product outcomes.  Key Takeaways: [2:06] Wes and Teresa speak about the core habits for success.   [5:06] Teresa discusses the idea of the product trio, comprised of a product manager, designer, and software engineer, emphasizing the benefits of cross-functional collaboration and decision-making. [8:02] Teresa highlights the importance of context and organization structure in kickstarting continuous discovery habits, depending on roles and team dynamics. [17:09] They speak about user research and the main questions you need to ask in your customer interviews.   [28:26] How they approach product launches. [31:54] Why using story drawings to provide structure is important to her process. About Teresa Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and coach. She teaches a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that helps product teams infuse their daily product decisions with customer input. She’s coached hundreds of teams at companies of all sizes, from early-stage start-ups to global enterprises, in a variety of industries. She has taught over 12,000 product people discovery skills through the Product Talk Academy and is the author of Continuous Discovery Habits. Links: LinkedIn

GoDaddy's VP of Marketing shares how the company's success lies in customer value. They focus on understanding customer behavior, segmentation, and personalized recommendations. By scoring customer value early, progressive onboarding, and experimentation, they drive significant growth.

Welcome back to our PLG False Starts Series. In this episode, host Mario Araujo interviews Leah Tharin, a fearless product leader who candidly discusses her "spectacular failures" at Smallpdf, a platform with over 50 million active users. Leah shares two specific failures that emphasize the importance of testing assumptions and considering all variables in product development. She reflects on her confident yet ill-fated decision to launch an untested idea, despite investing significant time and effort. Additionally, she reveals the intricacies of a partnership with Miro, an industry rising star, which went astray due to oversight and misalignment. Throughout this insightful conversation, Leah generously imparts her experiences, insights, and invaluable lessons learned from these failures. Tune in for a candid exploration of the highs and lows of product development. Key Takeaways: [0:10] Introduction to the podcast and guest Leah Tharin [2:03] Leah’s past experiences and failures [3:21] Failure 1: An experiment on improving technology for document conversion at Smallpdf [4:40] Clarifying the experiment's goal and the assumption of improved technology leading to success [6:24] Lesson learned about not being overconfident and the importance of testing [8:34] Failure 2: Discussing the team's excitement and the collaboration discussions, but ultimately receiving a rejection from Miro [12:57] The mistake of not understanding Miro's priorities and feeling personally responsible for the failure [14:32] Emotional impact of the failure and the importance of being specific and vulnerable in sharing failures [15:19] Discussing Smallpdf culture and how leadership and the ecosystem reacted to failures [15:51] The importance of trust and how their team stood behind them [16:27] The fear of admitting failure and the importance of overcoming it  [17:08] Acknowledging imperfection is crucial [18:28] The impact of embracing failure [19:18] The hierarchical perspective while growing [20:26] Understanding customer needs and market dynamics are crucial [23:48] Shift from passion to factual analysis in managing ideas [25:05] Ask questions to investigate the context behind ideas [28:00] Impact of empathetic and nurturing leadership [33:31] Pressure and challenges faced by growth leaders About Leah Tharin: Leah Tharin is a tech veteran with over 20 years of experience, having founded four startups, including two with notable setbacks. As the Head of Product at Jua, Leah drives end-to-end Machine Learning in Weather solutions. Notably, Leah led the scaling of Smallpdf's core product, amassing 50 million monthly active users in just three years. Specializing in B2B product-led growth, Leah offers straightforward, actionable insights to fellow industry professionals. Links: Leah Tharin | LinkedIn  Leah’s AI-Tea blog

Wes Bush, founder of the ProductLed Institute, shares insights on scaling self-serve revenue using the ProductLed Method™️. He discusses the rise of product-led growth in the SaaS industry and the importance of vision, user, and model. The three components of the growth engine, offer, experience, and pricing, are highlighted. Wes introduces phase three of the method, focusing on exponential growth and scaling. The podcast also mentions Wes Bush's new book on scaling a SaaS business.

Open source software is freely available to use, modify, and distribute. By learning how to integrate it with your product-led growth (PLG) strategy, you’ll unlock innovation and success for your business. In this episode, we are joined by Nikhil Nandagopal, a co-founder of Appsmith, who imparts his insights and experiences in building team tools with open source.  Nikhil delves into the hurdles associated with growing a PLG business, open source technology, and the delicate task of balancing the requirements of both the vocal minority and the silent majority. Key Takeaways: [2:00] How security and data are core parts of open source software [3:30] The importance of having a core product or market insight to base your PLG strategy on  [5:45] Advice on integrating open source into your PLG strategy [7:30] Benefits of open source [8:15] How to make open source easy for developers to try out and use your product [10:00] Leveraging your community to drive growth and how to measure success in open source  [12:30] The future of open source and PLG [15:00] How open source will continue to play a role in PLG and how it will evolve in the future About Nikhil Nandagopal: Nikhil Nandagopal is a co-founder of Appsmith, the first open-source low-code platform for developers. He is a software engineer and entrepreneur with 10 years of experience building apps.  Links:  Nikhil Nandagopal’s LinkedIn https://www.appsmith.com/