ProductLed Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Tom Ronen is the head of customer success at monday.com. Monday.com is a global software company founded in 2014. Its product is a simple and super customizable Work Operating System (Work OS), a tool that powers teams to run projects and workflows with confidence. In this episode, Tom will talk about how product and customer success collaborate on monday.com.

Show Notes

[01:56] What monday.com is and its customers

[03:05] The importance of customer success and product teams to work closely together for him

[06:14] On finding the north star for both teams and KPIs to prioritize

[08:00] Who are the ‘active customers’ for monday.com

[10:13] Propagating the culture of transparency in all teams at monday.com

[12:31] Strategies to encourage collaboration from the teams at monday.com

[14:28] The evident effects of the system of doing things at monday.com

[18:00] His advice for product-led leaders and growth people on setting priorities

[20:25] His advice for customer success people in product-led organizations on getting their voices heard

[22:08] How to connect with Tom

About Tom Ronen

Tom Ronen is an experienced Customer Team Lead working for various companies in the software industry. He possesses the following skills in sales, public speaking, management in a fast-paced startup environment. Aside fromHe was previously connected with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as a Commanding Officer - Combat Patrol Ship Unit for three years and two months. 

Profile

• monday.com
• Tom Ronen on LinkedIn

In this podcast, Wes Bush dives into the essential strategies for building a product-led business. Drawing from his experience of working with 408+ SaaS companies, Wes outlines the pitfalls of what he calls "surface-level PLG" and introduces a comprehensive approach that involves nine core components— the ProductLed System. When you implement the system into your business, you'll grow faster with less effort. Tune in to learn how.

Key Highlights:

01:30: Introduction to the importance of standing out in a commoditized market.

3:08: The shift from sales-led to product-led growth.

5:14: Common mistakes in product-led growth.

10:02: Key outcomes of successful product-led businesses.

17:24: Scaling up with the ProductLed System.

33:07: Final thoughts and next steps for building a product-led organization.

Alison Taylor and Trevor Johnston are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Jane, an online platform for health and wellness practitioners that makes it simple to book, chart, schedule, bill, and get paid. They join Ramli on the show to talk about product-market fit and how customer service is at the heart of a product-led business. They then go through the steps they have taken (and still take) to overcome growing pains.

Show Notes

[01:17] How the Jane app came to be and scaled with just one “customer support” team

[05:34] The signup process is a way to get customers committed and to get them on the product journey

[08:00] Why Alison and Trevor decided not to go with the freemium model 

[09:48] About Jane’s high-touch onboarding experience

[12:26] Prioritize loyal customers over sales

[15:23] The evolution of Jane’s signup process

[19:30] About Jane’s org structure and support system

[23:48] The challenge of hiring and helping people develop their careers

[28:05] How marketing and engineering fit in Jane’s org structure

[30:05] Alison and Trevor’s advice for product-led startups

About Alison Taylor and Trevor Johnston

Alison Taylor has been in the healthcare space as a business manager since 2008, and she believes in the integration of work into life and life into work. She hired Trevor’s creative agency to brand her clinic, Canopy Integrated Health, which she opened in 2011.

Trevor Johnston loves doing creative things with technology to create enjoyable experiences and to solve people’s problems. He co-founded Thought Shop Creative Inc. and was its lead digital guy until 2016. Jane is his first app and his first foray into coding.

Profile

Jane

Alison Taylor’s LinkedIn

Trevor Johnston’s LinkedIn

Ben Williams is the VP of Product (Developer Journeys, PLG) at Snyk. He joined Snyk over a year ago and spearheads the product management for Product-Led Growth and helps the company propel towards its growth trajectory.

He’s on the show today to give us an idea of how they strategize their growth, identify growth loops, and maintain well-balanced communication at Snyk that made a big impact on their success.

Show Notes

[0:39] What got him into the world of PLG?

[2:01] Talks about Snyk’s first premium

model

[4:35] Why is it that their first iteration wasn’t that successful? 

[6:31] Initial problems that they’ve had to address that contributed to their success

[10:33] How do they try to centralize everything and tackle specific problems within their team?

[18:08] Focusing on a user’s path to value rather than their path to revenue

[19:13] How did they utilize their product to acquire more users?

[26:47] It is critical to develop a high-level PLG strategy.

[33:1] On team-based accountability for achieving outcomes

 [38:43] How aligned leadership is important

About Ben Williams

Ben is a highly motivated, enthusiastic and energetic product and growth executive with years of expertise across a wide range of industries. He specializes in product leadership and management. and is always passionate about excellence and doing better.

Link

Snyk

Profile

Ben’s LinkedIn Profile

Francis Brero is the co-founder and CPO of MadKudu. A data scientist obsessed with leveraging science to improve efficiency and effectiveness, Francis converted to sales along the way. He shares how he helps B2B SaaS companies get the most out of their inbound pipelines by automating the high-cost, low-leverage work of researching, qualifying, and engaging leads.

Show Notes

[00:43] Rollout a PLG or enterprise motion

[03:27] Misconceptions around enterprise sales and PLG

[11:18] The difference in the level of understanding of the value proposition

[17:36] User-centric versus holistic view in an enterprise potential deal

[22:30] Compensation for high-touch and low-touch

[24:40] Recommendations for implementing enterprise sales in a product-led business

About Francis Brero

Francis Brero is obsessed with leveraging science to improve efficiency and effectiveness. He is a data scientist converted to sales along the way. Currently, he helps B2B SaaS companies get the most out of their inbound pipelines by automating the high-cost, low-leverage work of researching, qualifying, and engaging leads.

Links

MadKudu

Top 10 Learnings About Free Trials

From Open-Source to Enterprise

Personalize Your Buyer Journeys

Profile

Francis’ Linkedin

Gina Allman is ProductLed’s content specialist. Her diverse background goes from finance to marketing. Despite the disparity, Gina can still draw the line from those various disciplines and apply it to marketing and product-led growth. She shares how she creates original content for the blog even when there is not much to find out there.

Show Notes

[00:58] Researching for content is not an easy task

[03:58] The 50 best PLG examples and what stood out the most

[08:37] A major principle of PLG is a great user experience

[10:08] What made other companies stand out

[14:28] Two key takeaways for freshly transitioning businesses

About Gina Allman

Gina Allman is a content specialist at ProductLed. She has held positions in a variety of disciplines, including finance, marketing, and content writing.

Link

ProductLed

Profile

Gina’s LinkedIn

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 is the Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow, a no-code builder for in-app onboarding and surveys that allows SaaS businesses to be more product-led. Userflow is 100% bootstrapped, and with just 3 people they have achieved 400+ customers and a 7-figure ARR (annual recurring revenue). Let's learn how they have been able to do this by having a product-led growth approach that focuses on the UI/UX of their product as well as building the strongest product possible.

Show Notes

[2:59] Do they just need a growth person, and how did the whole idea start?

[5:35] Product-Led Growth facilitates the retention of direct customer feedback

[8:13] What are the first big initial steps that he took to scale up his business?

[11:43] You need to have a lot of integrity and certainty in what you’re doing.You need to believe in the product that you’re selling

[14:15] How does he differentiate SEM from SEO?

[17:12] What’s the next big step that he took to 5x the business?

[21:12] Esben walks us through how he refines value propositions

[33:26] The more open your messaging is, the more different kinds of users you will have

[42:44] How does his company maintain customer focus?

[50:12] Esben’s deliberate game plan for his business

About Esben Friis-Jensen

Esben Friis-Jensen is the co-founder of Userflow, a no-code platform for building onboarding guides and product tours.Before working on Userflow, he co-founded an application security platform called Cobalt. Additionally, he has a background as an Accenture consultant with more than three years of experience in test and deployment management of global IT implementations.

Links

Userflow

Cobalt

Monday

Profile

Esben’s LinkedIn