ProductLed

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HubSpot went from $0 to $2B ARR by doing what Salesforce ignored. Back then, most solutions were complex and built mainly for enterprise companies with dedicated teams and IT departments. HubSpot saw the gap and went all in on the segment no one was actively pursuing - the SMBs. They needed an integrated platform, but no one was building for them. Contrary to popular belief, HubSpot wasn't product-led for a long time. They began with marketing automation software in 2006, using traditional sales-led approaches for nearly 8 years. By 2014, they were burning cash and struggling to scale efficiently. They couldn't afford a sales-led approach for SMB deal sizes. CAC was too high and the unit economics were broken. That's when they made the hard pivot. ✅ Built free sales tools (i.e. Sidekick) ✅ Then built a free CRM as a the gateway to their platform ✅ Kept CAC low with self-serve adoption across their entire platform The free product forced them to solve problems they'd previously handled with sales: ☑ Onboarding had to work without hand-holding ☑ Value had to be obvious without explanation ☑ Users needed to see results quickly This constraint became their competitive advantage. However, HubSpot didn’t stop at SMBs. They built a self-serve system that scaled up from scrappy startups to mid-market, and now even enterprise. That’s what makes them so hard to compete with today.

Most SaaS companies get PLG backward. Here’s how it usually goes: A SaaS company starts with a sales-led motion. They hire reps, chase enterprise deals, and build custom features to close contracts. Eventually, they realize the limitations of this model - high acquisition costs, slow sales cycles, and linear growth. So, they decide to adopt PLG. But by then, it’s a tough slog. • The product wasn’t built for self-serve. • Onboarding feels clunky because it wasn’t a priority. • And the technical debt is enormous, making retrofitting PLG an uphill battle. I was recently talking to an early-stage SaaS who wanted to invest in PLG right from the get-go. This was their argument: "Building with a PLG-first mindset forces discipline." It forces your team to: ☑ Strip away unnecessary complexity. ☑ Focus on delivering immediate value without hand-holding. ☑ Design user flows that guide users to success independently. Of course, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. For early-stage SaaS companies, validating PMF often takes priority (as it should). But waiting too long to implement PLG can create technical debt and onboarding friction that’s hard to undo. If you have the option, designing with PLG in mind from day one gives you a huge advantage. You’ll streamline onboarding, reduce complexity, and build a product that can sell itself.

Give us 2 mins and we’ll show you how your B2B SaaS can save $850k - $2.7M in the next 12 months. When we tell founders they could save millions with PLG, they think we're overselling. So we built a PLG ROI Calculator using Lovable. It factors in your current: ☑ Monthly website traffic and conversion rates ☑ Sales team costs and efficiency ☑ Customer acquisition costs ☑ Support and success expenses and a bunch of other business inputs before giving an accurate estimate. Then it shows you the compound effect of PLG across revenue gains and cost savings. Want to see how much you can save? Try out the calculator: https://lnkd.in/g8k6ChhR Also, we’ve spent the last 2 weeks working on a mammoth guide to help you go from sales-led to product-led. We’ve laid out a step-by-step framework to help you smoothly transition without hurting existing revenue. Here's the guide: https://lnkd.in/ghYc-Hqs

If your offer is weak, hiring an expensive copywriter won’t fix your conversion rates. You need to build a winning strategy first. When you do that, the odds of improving your conversation rates increase exponentially. CONTEXT One of our clients PromoTix was going up against Eventbrite, and they identified they could win against Eventbrite with: ☑ Lower prices. ☑ Better marketing tools to help sell more tickets. That’s PromoTix’s winning strategy. PromoTix simply leaned into those two big advantages in the homepage copy and increased sign ups by more than 40% - with the same amount of traffic! It pays to have a clear strategy and differentiators. Your visitors are smart and can sniff out in a few seconds whether your solution is for them or not. Yet, along your journey of crafting an irresistible offer, there are three mistakes that can derail your conversion rates: Mistake #1: Being too cute You know what I'm talking about – headlines that read, "We're the AI-enabled solution to blah blah blah" So you do... what exactly? Your visitors will make a snap decision on whether you can help them in seconds. If you take forever to explain what your product does, how it helps them, and why they should choose you, they're going to find another solution. Mistake #2: No enhancers Chocolate ice cream is delicious on its own. Yet put peanut butter on it, and you've just taken that ice cream from a 7/10 to a 10/10 experience. Without enhancers like social proof, guarantees, and risk reversals, you won't be compelling enough. Mistake #3: Lack of structure Your homepage should flow like a story. You meet the villain (a big challenge), sign up for the product, and then beat the villain with your new powers. Most homepages lack structure or just ramble on about the greatness of the solution. According to data from our ProductLed Assessment, only 9% of companies feel confident they have an irresistible offer in their market. The other 91% are leaving money on the table every single day. If you want to craft an irresistible offer that can help you drive more sign-ups, join me for my upcoming live workshop tomorrow at 11:30 AM EST. I’m teaming up with Pedro Cortés, SaaS copywriting pro, to host a 90-minute live workshop where you'll: ☑ Craft your irresistible offer ☑ Rewrite your homepage copy ☑ Leverage an AI tool to implement everything By end of the 90-min workshop, you’ll leave with a launch-ready homepage draft that will (ideally) increase your conversion rates by at least 10%. Registration link is in the comments. P.S. Bring your product, marketing, and sales team for best results. P.P.S. If you’d like some feedback on your new homepage on the live workshop, just let me know in the comments and make sure you show up live. I can’t guarantee we’ll pick your company but we can try our best to help you out.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but your product alone won't make PLG work. Most companies focus exclusively on product features when it comes to making their users successful, but that's a problem. Take Photoshop for example. Learning how to use Photoshop is just one piece. Beyond that, users need certain skills (like photo editing) and knowledge (design principles) to get the most from it. Typically, what holds users back from seeing success comes down to addressing these three barriers: 1) Knowledge Gap - What information are users missing? You can't give a map without a legend. 2) Skill Gap - What abilities do your users need? Your product is only as valuable as your users' ability to leverage it. 3) Product Gap - It's rarely the missing feature that hurts conversions. More often, it's poor onboarding that creates invisible walls between users and value. This is why you're seeing companies like ClickFunnels offering courses around everything they do. They understand that their tool alone isn't enough. Users need the supporting knowledge and skills to be successful. Try this exercise next week: Identify your biggest user challenge and create one solution across all three dimensions. The more holistically you approach your free models - whether through content, product, or training, the more effective you'll be at helping users experience value. That's how you make PLG work. Happy weekend!

Old SaaS playbook: Limit free features to drive conversions. New SaaS playbook: Create exceptional free value for 90% of users while generating revenue from the 10% who need more advanced capabilities. I call these companies "90/10 businesses" These companies give away so much value for free that around 90% of their users will never need to pay, while they generate revenue from the remaining 10%. I find them fascinating because they often: ☑ Start scrappy and bootstrapped (no fancy VC millions) ☑ Run with tiny, nimble teams that move incredibly fast (3-7 team members) ☑ Build a product so good that free users naturally spread the word ☑ Focus on removing friction rather than adding bloat I recently interviewed Marie from Tally about this approach. In less than 5 years, they've grown to 500,000+ users with just 5 people on their team, hitting $2M ARR. What stuck with me was her focus on fixing "paper cuts" instead of chasing shiny new features. While Typeform and others built complex products with volume-based pricing, Tally spent their first FOUR YEARS obsessing over making their free product exceptionally easy to use. They even give unlimited form submissions for free, which honestly surprised me. If you're interested in learning how to disrupt saturated markets while remaining fully bootstrapped, listen to my conversation with Marie. Link in the comments 👇