The essence of product led growth

What would you think about your product acting as your best sales person instead of relying on an army of sales reps to cold call potential customers? Users can try your product out, fall in love with it, and decide to pay for it – all without ever talking to a human. That’s the essence of Product Led Growth. This week we’re sharing examples of product led growth, how to determine if you really are product led, and whether sales driven companies can become product led.

Meanwhile, in product news, Tinybird helps you access your data quickly, Adobe won’t let you cancel easily, people are still planning on leaving their jobs, and Apple is running afoul of the EU.

21+ Inspiring Product-Led Growth Examples to Supercharge Your Strategy. Calendly, Zoom, Slack, and Dropbox are all incredible product-led companies that seem to be highlighted in every product-led growth (PLG) example. But what characteristics make them worth looking at? After signing up with more than 50 product-led growth companies, Gina Allman , Program Manager at ProductLed, found the features they all have in common .

Are you really product led? Everyone’s talking about “product-led” these days, from product managers to company bosses. However, implementing a successful product-led strategy goes beyond simply using the product internally. Ekta Mishra explores how various departments within a company can collaborate to leverage the product as a core driver of growth and user acquisition . By outlining specific actions for each functional area, we will demonstrate a practical roadmap for organizations to transition towards a truly product-led approach.

Can Every Sales-Driven Company be Transformed to Being Product-Led? Jason Knight was chatting to Rich Shnieder on his Slack community recently and he posed this simple-looking question: “Do you believe that every sales-driven organization can be transformed to being product-led , or are some businesses just always destined to be sales-driven?” Jason’s first answer was “No!” - but then he had some follow-ups.

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This week’s Video

How to go from self-serve to enterprise. Seven years after launching their first product, Optimizely has grown Average Selling Price from three-figures to five-figures. Along the way, they’ve had to change the way they marketed, sold, supported, and built their products. Pete Koomen shares stories, insights, and lessons learned from the journey from self-serve to enterprise .

This video, and many more just like it, are available in Product Collective's YouTube Channel.

This week on Rocketship.fm

The 2024 Summer Edition of Shopify - A Brand New Product Launch. In this episode of Rocketship.FM , host Mike Belsito takes listeners behind the scenes of Shopify's latest product launch. Featuring an exclusive interview with Glen Coates , Shopify's VP of Product, the episode explores the company's innovative approach to introducing new features and products through their biannual "Editions" events. Coates shares insights into Shopify's product development process, the challenges of maintaining a startup mentality in a large organization, and the theme of their latest release: "Unified."

The conversation also covers the growing impact of AI on e-commerce, with Coates discussing Shopify's integration of AI-powered tools like Shopify Magic and Sidekick. He offers valuable advice for product teams looking to incorporate AI into their own products and services, emphasizing the importance of starting small and focusing on simplifying tasks for users. The episode concludes with Coates' thoughts on the future of AI in commerce and key takeaways for product managers navigating this rapidly evolving landscape.

Product Management News: Week of June 24, 2024

I’m tiny as a bird now. If you want to get to your data quickly you may be tempted to jump on the bar and yell “Tinybird!” at the top of your lungs. Tinybird is a real time data analytics platform that helps your team solve complex real-time, operational, and user-facing analytics use cases at any scale. Tinybird makes it easy to import data from a variety of sources, use SQL to filter, aggregate, and join that data, and publish low-latency, high-concurrency RESTful API endpoints. You can build and manage your Tinybird data projects just as you would any software, using version control.

You can check out, but you can never leave. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Adobe alleging that the company deceives consumers by hiding the early-termination fee and making it difficult for people to cancel their subscriptions. In the complaint, the DOJ says Adobe pushed consumers toward the “annual paid monthly” subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars.

Workin’ for a living, at a different company. According to a PWC survey of the global workforce , the proportion of workers who expect to switch employers in the next 12 months is higher than that from the "Great Resignation" period of 2022. Around 28% of more than 56,000 workers surveyed by PwC said they were "very or extremely likely" to move from their current companies, compared to 19% in 2022, and 26% in 2023. The survey results didn’t address how many survey respondents were going to chose to leave their current company.

Apple fought the law, and the law won. European Union antitrust regulators have accused Apple of violating the bloc’s tech rules , potentially leading to a substantial fine. The European Commission, responsible for antitrust and technology regulation, announced its preliminary findings following an investigation initiated in March. That move marks the first charge under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law designed to curb Big Tech’s dominance and foster fair competition. Apple could face fines of up to 10% of its global annual turnover if it fails to address the concerns.

Resources and news curated by Kent J McDonald