How to Go from Idea to MVP as a First-Time Founder

There’s this moment every first-time founder hits, usually late at night, with too many tabs open and a half-written Notion doc: What exactly am I supposed to do next?
You’ve got an idea that makes sense in your head. Maybe even a few sketches or a name. But moving from vague concept to something real, like a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), can feel like stepping into fog.

Here’s what that journey looks like when you're building your first MVP from scratch.
/1. Stop obsessing over the product

The biggest trap new founders fall into is building too soon. Everyone I spoke to said they started with the wrong thing: features, branding, even UI mockups, before they even understood the actual problem.

Instead of starting with the product, most experienced founders now start with something much simpler: conversations. Specifically, talking to the people they’re trying to build for. That doesn’t mean launching a survey to your friends. It means talking to real potential users—asking how they currently solve the problem, what frustrates them, and what they’ve already tried.

/2. What’s the smallest version of your idea that’s still useful?

Once you’ve grounded your idea in a real, painful problem, the next step is figuring out the minimum you need to build to test it.

This is your MVP, not a buggy prototype, but the simplest version of your product that delivers value.

In India, one solo founder building a peer-to-peer tutoring app skipped development altogether. Instead, she launched with a landing page, a Google Form for bookings, and WhatsApp to manually match students and tutors. It wasn’t scalable. It wasn’t sleek. But it worked. And within two weeks, she knew exactly what her users cared about and what they didn’t.

/3. Tools don’t matter as much as learning fast

A lot of first-time founders feel stuck because they think they need a developer, or a big budget, or a “technical cofounder.” But what they often need is momentum, and that usually starts with no-code or low-effort tools.

/4. Launch early. Like, earlier than you think.

Here’s the truth: most first MVPs don’t flop because the product is bad; they flop because they never launch.

Founders overthink. They polish. They wait until it’s perfect. But every founder I spoke to who made progress launched early, often within a few weeks of shaping the idea. The launch wasn’t always public. Sometimes it was a quiet rollout to 10 users or even five. The point was to get feedback fast.

/5. Use feedback to decide what not to build next

Most MVPs aren’t magical. They break. They confuse users. That’s the point.

The difference between founders who make it past this phase and those who don’t? The ones who iterate based on feedback instead of defending the product they spent weeks building.

After the first launch, smart founders treat feedback like data; not criticism. You’re not trying to please everyone. You’re trying to find patterns: where users drop off, what features they’re asking for, and what you assumed that turned out to be wrong.

What success looks like at the MVP stage

It’s easy to get distracted by what success looks like on tech Twitter. But none of the founders I spoke to measured MVP success by virality, downloads, or press. Their benchmarks were simpler and way more practical.

For some, it was 10 people using the product more than once. For others, it was someone willing to pay. One founder’s success metric? “When someone I didn’t know messaged me asking if they could invite a friend.”

That’s traction. Not in the flashy, venture-backed sense, but in the real, messy, you’re onto something kind of way.

The original content of the note was published on Techloy.com. To read the full note visit here

The no-marketing-trap: Why even product-led growth companies need to invest in marketing early

Product Lead Growth (PLG) is usually considered the most powerful go-to-market model for SaaS businesses. Driven by the strength of the product and word-of-mouth recommendations, customers come inbound and sign up for your product by either self-serve on the website or after a light sales touch from the “Inbound” team. So far so good. But what do you do once you have a successful PLG model?

From my experience, it is obvious that even with the strongest PLG momentum you need to invest early in building a marketing engine, long before you even think about moving to Outbound sales. Here’s why:

Hitting the adoption curve
To understand why it’s important to build a high-performing marketing function early, it helps to take a look at who adopts your product and when — the so-called Adoption Curve.

The first users will be Innovators. Trying new things is important to them. They are the driving force behind your initial growth. They are risk-takers, inspired to try new things by technology communities, by what they read in blogs and social media, etc. The more momentum you create in this early phase, the better. Following on are the Early Adopters.

The third group is the Early Majority. While it is not quite so critical to them, they still do have an interest in staying at the forefront of innovation but are concerned about the risk of failure. They are typically unwilling to do a lot of research, so relevant information needs to be easily found. The final two groups are Late Majority and Laggards, but they are less relevant for you now.

Each of these groups needs to be spoken to through marketing. However, each audience requires different channels and ways to connect. If you fail to adapt your marketing as you progress through the adoption curve, or you don’t do any marketing in the early phases, your PLG will slow down prematurely.

Think about website offerings
Your website is your shop window and you only have a few seconds to catch a visitor’s interest (estimated to be 10-20 seconds). It’s vital, therefore, to invest the time to craft clear compelling messaging that will capture their attention and there are a few things to consider as you think about how that website will support the next growth stage.

Bringing more traffic is the obvious next step, but making sure you are attracting the right traffic is key.

Content fuel
“Content is the fuel your new marketing engine runs on” says Liz Smyth, VP of Marketing at Slack. “First and foremost capture and tell your best customer stories.”

They are not just the proof points that your prospective new customers need to hear, but also critical in helping the market understand new product offerings, their use cases and the value that can be derived. Also, take the time to create a few key pieces of thought leadership content.

Optimise the engine

Once the engine is running, it will be time to find ways to optimise it, often by looking at conversion rates and finding ways to improve them. Look at your website analytics to understand where your website visitors are engaging or dropping off. At this stage paid lead generation, webinars and content for specific personas and buying stages become increasingly important.

This content, often called ‘full-funnel’, is designed to meet the buyers where they are on the attract-engage-convert journey.

My advice to teams is to start by creating a few content assets for each stage, then build out your library and optimize it over time.

Laying a strong foundation
If you have a strong PLG business, delaying building a strong marketing function or, as we’ve seen in extreme cases, almost leapfrog marketing and jump directly to building an outbound sales motion, is a mistake.

If you don’t invest in a marketing team, you are likely to face significant difficulties building an Outbound motion, and eventually even experience premature slow-downs of your PLG. Instead, companies that use the initial time of strong PLG to build out a proper marketing function experience a longer period of healthy PLG and Inbound growth and are eventually more successful in their efforts to go Outbound.

The original content of the note was published on Eu-startups.com. To read the full note visit here

Product-Led Growth: How Consultants And In-House Users Fuel Adoption

Many B2B software companies—Notion, Airtable and Zapier, to name a few—have used product-led growth (PLG) as an alternative or supplement to traditional sales channels.

Product-led growth, as described by McKinsey, is when a company gives "the product itself a critical role in acquiring, growing and retaining customers." A ProductLed survey found that the majority of B2B SaaS companies are already using this strategy, and 91% of those companies plan to invest more in PLG initiatives this year.

The most successful PLG B2B tools share two traits:

1.Ease Of Adoption: Minimal friction to onboard, such as no IT approval needed.
2.High Output Leverage: Produce significantly better results compared to legacy systems.

This mix creates a flywheel: Users experience value quickly and often share the product via templates, automations or recommendations—driving organic spread.

However, one thing that's generally not well understood about PLG for B2B software sales is how to achieve a self-sustaining adoption loop involving service providers and in-house teams at companies that would use the product.

How Service Providers Drive Early Adoption
Service providers are often the first to adopt new tools because their work depends on staying current. They test, validate and scale solutions across client accounts. Here are a few reasons why they can serve as the first-movers on the adoption of new B2B products:

1.Early Adoption And Experimentation: Freelancers and agencies adopt tools to increase efficiency.

2.Content Creation And Thought Leadership: Once confident in the solution, providers create content—tutorials, LinkedIn posts, YouTube guides—sharing their success and use cases.

3.Client Implementation And Validation: Validated tools are introduced to clients via consulting engagements, workflow builds and system replacements. Each implementation brings the product into a new business, often with long-term use and expansion.

4.Becoming Product Champions: Successful providers often brand themselves around the product, build services around it and earn referrals—transforming the product into a key part of their business model.

How In-House Teams Sustain And Expand Adoption
While service providers introduce products, in-house teams drive continued use and expansion. Here's how:

1.Exposure And Internal Adoption: In-house employees exposed to tools via freelancers often become proficient users. Teams working with Webflow agencies, for instance, might keep using the platform even after the agency’s role ended.

2.Employee Mobility and Cross-Company Seeding: Employees regularly switch jobs. If they found success with a tool, they often bring it to their next company—seeding growth across organizations. At Clay, we often see users reintroduce the product within 60 to 90 days of starting a new role.

3.The Side-Gig Acceleration Effect: Many full-time professionals also freelance. They adopt tools at work, then use them with personal clients—spreading the product across even more companies and audiences.

How To Leverage The Service Provider-In-House Loop
Growth teams at B2B software companies should treat service providers and in-house users as distinct but interconnected audiences. Here’s how to optimize their PLG strategy for both:

1.Prioritize service provider acquisition. Providers introduce tools to new companies. Focus acquisition here with:

-Targeted campaigns
-Partner directories
-Exclusive incentives (discounts, early access)

2.Turn providers into champions. Support providers with certification programs, white-label or client-facing features and affiliate or revenue-share programs. They’ll grow the tool if it helps them grow their business.

3.Streamline provider-to-client handoff. Make it easy for providers to transfer ownership or collaborate with clients through transferable workspaces, co-editing features and role-based access and dashboards.

4.Deepen in-house adoption. Once in-house users are active, help them expand internally with pre-built templates, cross-functional use cases and lightweight onboarding.

Conclusion: Best Practices For Sustainable PLG Growth
The service provider-to-in-house loop isn’t a side effect; it’s a proven growth mechanism. To unlock it fully:

-Track your loop. Use analytics or CRM to identify how users first heard about your product.
-Segment your messaging. Service providers want scale; in-house users want collaboration and simplicity.
-Invest in your champions. Build community, offer education and recognize the people growing your product for you.

This growth loop doesn’t require massive ad budgets or big sales teams. It just requires a product that works, a strategy that supports both segments and a willingness to let users lead.

The original content of the note was published on Forbes.com. To read the full note visit here

The no-marketing-trap: Why even product-led growth companies need to invest in marketing early

Product Lead Growth (PLG) is usually considered the most powerful go-to-market model for SaaS businesses. Driven by the strength of the product and word-of-mouth recommendations, customers come inbound and sign up for your product by either self-serve on the website or after a light sales touch from the “Inbound” team. So far so good. But what do you do once you have a successful PLG model?

Having worked for several companies with highly successful PLG motions, including Slack, Dropbox and Google in the early years (yes, PLG was also Google’s initial growth driver), I’m often asked what the new generation of SaaS companies should do following very high initial growth driven by PLG.

From my experience, it is obvious that even with the strongest PLG momentum you need to invest early in building a marketing engine, long before you even think about moving to Outbound sales. Here’s why:

Hitting the adoption curve

To understand why it’s important to build a high-performing marketing function early, it helps to take a look at who adopts your product and when — the so-called Adoption Curve.

The first users will be Innovators. Trying new things is important to them. They are the driving force behind your initial growth. They are risk-takers, inspired to try new things by technology communities, by what they read in blogs and social media, etc. The more momentum you create in this early phase, the better. Following on are the Early Adopters. They also get their inspiration from blogs, forums and social media. But they seek a lot more information before deciding to use a new product and look for proof points that your technology will work.

The third group is the Early Majority. While it is not quite so critical to them, they still do have an interest in staying at the forefront of innovation but are concerned about the risk of failure. They are typically unwilling to do a lot of research, so relevant information needs to be easily found. The final two groups are Late Majority and Laggards, but they are less relevant for you now.

Each of these groups needs to be spoken to through marketing. However, each audience requires different channels and ways to connect. If you fail to adapt your marketing as you progress through the adoption curve, or you don’t do any marketing in the early phases, your PLG will slow down prematurely. You will have less momentum with Innovators, and Early Adopters may not come inbound at all. Moreover, Outbound Sales targeting the Early Majority will also struggle if there is no effective marketing team in place.

Think about website offerings

Your website is your shop window and you only have a few seconds to catch a visitor’s interest (estimated to be 10-20 seconds). It’s vital, therefore, to invest the time to craft clear compelling messaging that will capture their attention and there are a few things to consider as you think about how that website will support the next growth stage.

Bringing more traffic is the obvious next step, but making sure you are attracting the right traffic is key. Understanding the buyer persona you are targeting and creating content for that persona will attract more of the buyers you want.

Content fuel

“Content is the fuel your new marketing engine runs on” says Liz Smyth, VP of Marketing at Slack. “First and foremost capture and tell your best customer stories.”

They are not just the proof points that your prospective new customers need to hear, but also critical in helping the market understand new product offerings, their use cases and the value that can be derived. Also, take the time to create a few key pieces of thought leadership content. This is content that educates and informs. It is often research-based or presents your opinions and insights on specific topics. Together, those become the cornerstones of your early PR strategies.

Optimise the engine

Once the engine is running, it will be time to find ways to optimise it, often by looking at conversion rates and finding ways to improve them. Look at your website analytics to understand where your website visitors are engaging or dropping off. A 1% or 2% improvement at the top can make a big difference farther down your funnel and accelerate it. At this stage paid lead generation, webinars and content for specific personas and buying stages become increasingly important.

This content, often called ‘full-funnel’, is designed to meet the buyers where they are on the attract-engage-convert journey. Light and short content for top-of-funnel targets who just heard about your product or search for a particular problem to solve e.g. answering “what is …” questions or “what to do if …”. Deeper content for mid-funnel including pain points solved, use cases, demos. For bottom-of-tunnel customer stories, feature comparisons, pricing info and analyst reports.

Laying a strong foundation


If you have a strong PLG business, delaying building a strong marketing function or, as we’ve seen in extreme cases, almost leapfrog marketing and jump directly to building an outbound sales motion, is a mistake.

If you don’t invest in a marketing team, you are likely to face significant difficulties building an Outbound motion, and eventually even experience premature slow-downs of your PLG. Instead, companies that use the initial time of strong PLG to build out a proper marketing function experience a longer period of healthy PLG and Inbound growth and are eventually more successful in their efforts to go Outbound.

The original content of the note was published on Eu-startups.com. To read the full note visit here

How product-led growth can help scale your business

In the modern digital landscape, product-led growth has emerged as a powerful and efficient growth strategy that aligns with customers' preferences and expectations.
Product-led growth (PLG) centers the product as the primary driver for customer acquisition, engagement, retention and expansion. In a PLG strategy, the product itself is designed to be intuitive, user-friendly and valuable, enabling users to easily adopt and get value from it without extensive effort from sales and marketing teams.
PLG often leads to lower customer acquisition costs, faster adoption rates, higher user engagement and increased customer loyalty.
However, PLG has made sales and marketing teams wonder if their roles will become obsolete. In short, no -- they aren't going anywhere. Marketers still hold the key to attracting users while sales reps amplify monthly recurring revenue. However, you should use PLG alongside existing efforts to gain a competitive edge in the market.
Growth isn't sequential
When you find product-market fit, you should distribute your product or service in a cost-effective way to grow your business. This process is known as the sales funnel. However, growth is only possible if you can help customers efficiently navigate their journeys through the funnel. If you can't drive product growth, it doesn't matter how good the offering is.
Further, this model requires a constant and increasing flow of potential users to function. You must acquire, retain and monetize your customer base. However, generating revenue, activating and retaining customers, and getting referrals creates silos within an organization
Sales funnels vs. growth loops
The linear sales funnel is a traditional approach to sales and marketing. It represents a step-by-step process detailing customers' actions, ideally leading to conversions, which produce more revenue over a customer's lifetime than acquisition. The sales funnel assumes that customer acquisition is an event, not a process. The funnel is a natural visual aid since the number of potential customers decreases as they move toward the final conversion stage, with only a fraction making a purchase.
The growth loop is a cyclical approach that recognizes how customer acquisition, retention and monetization are interconnected and ongoing processes. Growth loops account for the fact that one customer's actions lead to more customers, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.
The future of PLG
PLG might become the dominant go-to-market strategy for B2B SaaS companies. It is disrupting the way vendors sell software. Product-led strategies are becoming increasingly effective due to advances in AI and machine learning (ML).
Businesses can use AI and ML to personalize CX, identify and fix usability issues, and predict churn. We can expect to see new tools and technologies emerge that are specifically designed to help companies implement and execute PLG strategies. PLG is currently most popular in the SaaS industry, but it has the potential to be successful in various other industries, as well.

The original content of the note was published on Techtarget.com. To read the full note visit here

Product-Led Growth Strategies: Are Customers Your Forgotten Product Manager?

Product-led growth is a hot topic these days. Product-led organizations desire a deeper connection with their customers and users. They attempt to understand their problems and anticipate what the customer wants.
Let's take a look at product-led growth strategies.
“Product-led growth means that every team in your business influences the product,” says Wes Bush, author of "Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself."
Consider your traditional sales-led growth model that consistently needs more: more business development reps to cold call prospective customers, more salespeople to demo to them, and more marketing budgets to generate the leads to fill the funnel.
Instead, product-led growth strategies rely on the product to drive customer acquisition, activation, retention and expansion. Regardless of if a company uses a free trial or a freemium product to drive sales, product-led growth companies always focus on one thing: the end user.
Product-Led Growth Strategies: It’s All About Adoption
Customers have come to expect a frictionless product experience. They don’t want to contact a salesperson to upgrade or purchase. They want a seamless experience driven by the product.
In product-led growth strategies, users need to get value from a product as quickly as possible, because it’s the customer onboarding experience that will convince them to activate or continue beyond a free trial period.
However, with many products, it can be challenging for customers to set up teams on a new platform or access the features necessary to accomplish their goals. That’s where customer success comes in.
Customer onboarding can make the difference between a customer successfully adopting your product the first time they use it, or churning before they realize the value your product you can deliver.
Marrying Qualitative and Quantitative Feedback
It used to be that all we needed to design a good product was gut instinct. But now, we must get as close to our customers as possible. And that means one thing: obsessing over data.
By aligning customer feedback with product data, product managers can make data-driven decisions about product development and improvement.
But quantitative data only goes so far, and that’s where customer success comes in. Customer success teams can help drive product-led growth with their understanding of the customer and their needs.
3 Ways to More Empathetic Understanding of Customers
Here are three ways customer success teams can help the product team supplement their quantitative feedback with a more empathetic understanding of the customer:
-Bring customer experience tools to the table: One of the most important things that product management and customer success teams can do is to develop a shared understanding of the customer. This includes understanding the customer's needs, preferences, pain points and goals.
-Get a deeper understanding of how customers use the product: Customer success teams are in regular contact with customers and can provide valuable feedback on product features and functionality. Product management teams can use this feedback to develop products that meet customer needs.
-Tap into your most passionate customers: Your CSMs know who your “power users” or brand evangelists are. They can help you close the feedback loop with these high-value customers, building greater loyalty and fueling their passion for your product.

The original content of the note was published on Cmswire.com. To read the full note visit here

How Enterprise Sales Can Supercharge Product-Led GrowthAppropriate resource allocation

Despite the recent reset of technology sector valuations, product-led growth (PLG) software companies continue to outperform.
PLG has caught fire in software markets. It focuses on enabling end users to discover, try, buy, and scale up their usage in a self-service manner. Many companies adopt a PLG strategy from day one and add traditional sales-led commercial motions over time. Meanwhile, sales-led software companies can add a PLG motion or take a hybrid approach by applying the PLG model or capabilities to select parts of their product and customer portfolios—for example, relying on a sales team for the initial sale, then shifting to PLG self-service for renewals or expansions.
PLG works best in markets where product configuration and deployment time are usually quick; end users can make purchasing decisions; the product is sticky, with usage growing over time; the potential customer base is broad, with lots of free users who can convert to paid users; and the product has features that entice users to upgrade to the next, higher-priced tier.
But in markets suited to PLG, what’s surprising is how many companies continue to struggle with the key to unlocking its full potential: enterprise sales.
Breaking through the ceiling
It may seem counterintuitive to integrate a live person into a business model tied to self-service. Nevertheless, getting end users to discover, sign up for, and engage with a product on their own can be challenging, especially if the product is complex or all its benefits aren’t obvious.
Plus, once PLG companies reach a critical mass of users, they often hit a revenue ceiling that’s tough to break through. As customer spending on an individual software vendor grows, the extra scrutiny and required budget approval by senior leadership can become roadblocks.
A dedicated sales team can help PLG companies move beyond one-off software purchases within enterprises and land bigger deals across the customer’s organization. Sales, customer success, and support teams can also unlock new avenues of growth for both customers and vendors by helping end users scale up product usage beyond what they could do alone.
Integrating enterprise sales and self-service
Many companies have difficulty seamlessly marrying enterprise sales with a product-led sales motion. The product, customer success, sales, and marketing teams share ownership of the customer journey and touch the same customer experiences, so without well-defined connection points and an operating model that effectively integrates the distinct functions, companies will have trouble maximizing growth. Leading companies focus on three things.
.Defined triggers for a person to engage with a customer
.Clear collaboration strategies
.Appropriate resource allocation

The original content of the note was published on Bain.com. To read the full note visit here

Learn How To Drive Sustainable Revenue With Product-Led Growth

The pandemic caused unexpected growth for some companies due to changes in our behavior. Zoom, Slack, Shopify, Netflix, and Square were well-positioned for this growth because they focus on product-led growth, also known as PLG.
These companies were able to experience hypergrowth during the pandemic by delivering an exceptional product experience that meets customers' needs in a rapidly changing environment. By focusing on product-led growth, these companies were able to weather the challenges and emerge as leaders in their respective industries.
1.Ask the right questions to evaluate Product-Led Growth's success.
Here are some key questions that can help assess the success of a product-led growth strategy and where to focus when implementing one.
1.How well is our product meeting customer needs and solving their problems?
2.What is our customer acquisition cost, and how is it trending over time?
3.What percentage of our growth comes from product-led channels like word-of-mouth and organic search?
4.How effectively are we using data and analytics to drive product decisions and inform the go-to-market strategy?
5.What is our net promoter score, and how has it been trending over time?
6.How well are we retaining and growing our existing customer base?
7.What is the feedback from our customers on product features, and how can we improve?
8.How well do we integrate product, marketing, and sales efforts to drive growth?
9.How do we build cross-functional solid alignment across the organization to execute a product-led growth strategy?
10.What are the metrics to measure success and set the right expectations with key stakeholders?
Answering these questions can provide insights into the effectiveness of a product-led growth strategy.
2.Embrace innovation as a critical component of Product-Led Growth.
Innovation is a critical component of product-led growth. A PLG strategy requires continually delivering new and improved experiences to customers. Tweaking, testing, and measuring parts of the user experience helps us keep our users more engaged and drive growth, even as we enter a period of increasing consumer thriftiness. This requires a culture of innovation where new ideas are encouraged and rapidly tested—and failures are seen as opportunities to learn and improve.
A successful growth strategy requires product-led growth and innovation, regardless of external economic conditions. Companies must prioritize the customer by continuously delivering new and improved experiences through innovation to attract and retain customers. This approach can help drive customer engagement and achieve sustainable revenue growth.
3.Build a community that adds value to your customers.
While having an enthusiastic customer base is excellent, if you can turn that user base into a community capable of supporting one another and sharing knowledge, you have the potential for a home run.
With relatively little effort from your company, a community can add exponential value to your users. Establishing a community may be as simple as setting up a Facebook group for verified users to talk with each other, monitoring that, and engaging where appropriate. Tracking the amount of user-generated content and the number of members provides a window into your community's health.
Follow the data—this will help identify the features that are your selling points.
This can show you where to focus your R&D for future iterations. And with a product-led growth strategy, reinvestment in your product is the key to everything.
As businesses look for more cost-effective ways to grow, a product's value proposition that delivers a great customer experience becomes increasingly compelling—and customers are less likely to "churn." This creates new opportunities for companies that have embraced product-led growth and innovation to differentiate themselves from their competition and achieve sustained growth through whatever economic waters are flowing through the moment.

The original content of the note was published on Hackernoon.com. To read the full note visit here

From product-led growth to product-led sales: Beyond the PLG hype

Ever since software-as-a-service (SaaS) innovators, including Atlassian and Slack, pioneered the product-led growth (PLG) model, the strategy has often been viewed as the “holy grail” for achieving efficient growth and above-average returns. Many tech companies, from other SaaS natives to established enterprise software providers to consumer product brands, have embraced this model. By giving customers control from the get-go, with the product at the center of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion, the theory goes, companies can scale their businesses with lower sales costs, greater product virality, and higher net retention.
However, succeeding with PLG is far from a simple proposition. Our research suggests that only a few companies that use it actually achieve outsize performance, and they do so by increasingly developing a hybrid motion known as product-led sales (PLS). This innovative approach combines elements of PLG with the more traditional enterprise model of sales-led growth (SLG), in which a salesperson sells the software in a long sales cycle, typically to a senior executive. Our research further shows that the companies that implement PLS most effectively can enjoy sizeable boosts in both revenue growth and valuation ratios.
What it means to be a product-led company
As the moniker suggests, being a product-led company means giving the product itself a critical role in acquiring, growing, and retaining customers.
All B2B software companies can adopt some aspects of this model in their go-to-market (GTM) motion by investing in the following elements:
.Digital as a demand-generation engine. A well-designed, engaging website with the following attributes is the primary driver of digital demand: interactive, use-case-based product demos; personalized landing pages with value propositions specific to different personas and roles; and simplified trial or live demo sign-ups.
.Seamless access to the product and TTV. Allowing customers to experience the product before they purchase it is an essential ingredient for product-led companies. Try-before-you-buy tools such as trials and “freemium” offers make the research and evaluation stage of the buying process come alive.
.Innovative sales techniques enhanced with product and usage analytics. Try-before-you-buy tools coupled with product analytics can help sales teams implement innovative data-driven strategies to increase conversions by understanding user behavior, segmenting users, and delivering personalized, product-led experiences accordingly.
.Cross-functional growth teams with an experimental mindset. Helping to fuel this seamless customer experience are company growth teams focused on constantly making incremental improvements in key conversion points to improve metrics such as user engagement, adoption, free-to-paid conversion, and TTV. These autonomous and empowered teams of about seven to nine individuals typically include a mix of product managers (PMs), data scientists, demand-generation specialists, content creators, designers, and marketing strategists.
Only a select few have mastered the product-led model
The common perception among software executives and investors is that product-led companies outperform their sales-led peers in revenue growth, operating efficiency, and market valuations. And while this is true in some cases, our recent analysis of 107 publicly listed B2B SaaS providers shows that most companies adopting product-led motions are not enjoying any boost.
A new hybrid approach combines the best of both worlds: product-led sales
The software sector had, for many years, generally believed that a clear distinction existed between the PLG and SLG target markets. Many industry participants and observers were convinced that the pure PLG approach worked best with small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) or particularly tech-savvy buyers, while SLG was the only way to build a scalable business serving enterprise customers.
Our experience and research strongly refute the notion of such a sharp dividing line in the two models’ applicability. Product-led motions exist on a broad spectrum, enabling most, if not all, B2B software companies to embrace this approach to one degree or another. The lines between PLG and SLG are already starting to blur; pure-play PLG companies are hiring sales teams to cater to large enterprises, while more traditional, SLG-driven companies are investing in product-led experiences to help their sales teams prove the value of the product and appeal to a new class of SMB customers.

The original content of the note was published on Mckinsey.com. To read the full note visit here

The 3 Phases of Product-Led Growth: The Triple Whale Method

Truly product-led companies are countercyclical. Even in a downturn, when customers are shutting down or slashing spending, your product or service remains in their stack. You made something they can’t live without.
Love from the market is how the best companies gain ground – in any economic environment. It is the clearest sign of product-led growth. But it doesn’t just happen to you. There’s a playbook for it.
TripleWhale is a smart data platform for ecommerce brands, which unlocks real-time performance metrics that empower brands to make better decisions.
The Triple Whale story is a crash course in product-led growth. Let’s deconstruct their insights and methods for your own startups.
You Can’t Have Product-Led Growth Without These 3 Things
Triple Whale’s growth method, simplified:
1.Find the fast-moving water: Triple Whale identified and quickly jumped into the fast-moving water around new ways that young people want to earn a living.
2.Validate your product promise: The product promise is in fact the first step of finding your product-market fit (a well-known prerequisite for growth), and testing its validity should be done before spending effort on building the product.
3.Set up your iteration machine: See how Triple Whale built an iteration machine driven by:
-Speed
-Lots of small product releases
-Constantly seeking customer feedback and product love.
Find The Fast-Moving Water
When it comes to finding fast-moving water, consumers are the leading indicator. But they’re often followed by small businesses, medium businesses, large enterprises, and finally governments. Everyone who wants to progress gets in the water eventually – but there is a huge advantage to getting there first.
When you find the fast-moving water, you’ll find that you grow a lot faster, even in a downturn. Underlying momentum pulls you forward.
Validate Your Product Promise
The Triple Whale founders had the great starting point of being a representative customer of their own market. In many cases this is the best type of founder-market-fit. But even if you are not your own perfect customer, you have to aggressively test whether the need that you perceive in your market is actually there. Go beyond yourself. Have the courage to check your assumptions and validate that thesis early on.
Build Your Iteration Machine
A dream product only becomes a dream product because the people who use it, love it.
Triple Whale continuously improved their product by building a customer feedback machine. This machine requires two things: 1. Speed. 2. Asking your users: “What do you think?”

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