Black Mirror's SaaS collab, Google Maps for Zelda, Super(loom)inal communication, and more...

👋 Hey, Ruchin here! Welcome to this week’s edition of the ✨Top of the Lyne✨ newsletter. Each week we publish the hottest news from the beautiful world of product-led growth! (PLG)

The outcome we're shooting for is simple... to get enough folks excited about the product-led world that we so dearly love ❤️

Subscribe to get this newsletter every week👇

---

Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

• If you ever find yourself lost in Hyrule, Replit’s got you covered 🗺

  Replit ⠕ @Replit

  another super cool replit project - Google maps' street view but for Zelda Breath of The Wild 🤯

• Superhuman for X goes mainstream 🦸🏻‍♀️

  All hail the king of category (re)creation, Rahul Vohra 🙌🏻

  Ankit Pansari @ankitpansari_

  We gotta give @rahulvohra for creating a whole new category of fast enterprise software. We have so many Superhuman for X today. @linear for issue tracking. @vimcal for calendar @Scratchpad for CRM Even @intercom announced a new inbox today. Real category creation!

• Super(loom)inal communication ⚡️

  A holy grail of science fiction in which communications occur at faster-than-light speeds without any drop in context and quality!

  A crazy sci-fi idea till yesterday, brought to reality by Loom today 🦄

  Vinay Hiremath @vhmth

  Today marks the beginning of an entirely new Loom. 🔍 Search by transcript 👤 Profiles 🏷 Tags 📢 Posting videos for discoverability 🏡 Home feed - looms you care about and are trending ➿ @ mentions to loop people in ✂️ Comments using transcript snippets for context

  

  Loom @loom

  💻 Introducing Loom HQ. Starting today, we’re rolling out access to a new video HQ. It’ll help you stay connected async and scale knowledge across teams. We’re excited to help organizations foster a tight-knit workplace with video: https://t.co/TE2hpyym8x https://t.co/kldXyrkAyQ

• This Replit story should be a Mr. Robot episode 💻

  Here’s how the early team pwned a group trying to abuse Replit:

  Amjad Masad ⠕ @amasad

  Going into startups, no one tells you that fighting is part of the job. At Replit, the toughest people we have to fight are dark web hackers. One time we went head-to-head against an underground group doing really bad things on our service -- this is the story:

  

• A SaaS x Black Mirror collab 😈

  A (dystopian?) thread on drumming up SaaS sales with AI-generated LinkedIn profiles 🧵

  Shannon Bond @shannonpareil

  Meet Keenan Ramsey. Her LinkedIn profile says she sells software for RingCentral & has a business degree from NYU. She likes CNN, Amazon, & Melinda French Gates. Her pitches come punctuated with emojis. npr.org/2022/03/27/108…

  

---

🔎 The PLG hunt

• Patreon reclaimed 90% of the time they used to spend implementing and fixing analytics. How? Meet Avo.

  The analytics governance platform founded by Stefania Olafsdóttir and Sölvi Logason is reimagining how verticals within organizations - PM, Dev, Data Science - plan, track, and govern analytics.

  Deep down, most companies, especially after past a certain stage, do not trust their data. Avo is the cross-functional glue that fixes this deep pain point using Inspectors, observability platforms, typesafe code, and unit tests.

  Avo @avohq

  ✨ New in Avo ✨ › Free trial of the Avo Team Plan › Name Mapping › Source-dependent values › And more… 🧵 bit.ly/3Da4oEN

  

  bit.lyNew in Avo: Free team plan trials and fresh features!Try out our paid features on a 7 day trial, get better tracking plan documentation with name mapping, billing roles, pinned properties, and more stuff to make your work smoother.

  Their team plan now has a free trial. 👆

  Which hot and upcoming PLG company are you most excited about? 👇🏻

---

Growth Stories 🚀

Breaking down the Lusha-machine 🛠

This week, we dive deep into one of PLG’s poster children.

Lusha, the sales intelligence platform raised two rounds in 2021 but grew to 12k paying customers fully bootstrapped prior to that. This is the story of the Tel-Aviv/Boston based company’s hyper-growth:

Toplyne @Toplynehq

12k paying customers and 500k+ registered users in just 4.5 years, with $0 in funding. Followed by two rounds of funding in 2021. A community of 800k+ A $1.5B valuation. Here's the @LushaData hyper-growth story: ft. @yonitseru @Assaf381 @PSG_equity

bit.lyLusha and the science of super-targeted prospectingThe story of the sales-intelligence platform’s hyper-growth to a $1.5B valuation in five years while building a community of 800k+

---

Fundraising, Venture Capital, and Exits 🤑

• Figma’s collaboration layer brought to the modern data stack:

  Hex.tech announced their Series B this week

  Sarah Wang @sarahdingwang

  1/ Excited to share that @a16z is leading @_hex_tech ’s Series B! One of the biggest gaps we’ve seen in the modern data stack is the collaboration layer aka what @figma brought to product design & @benchling to life sciences… That is, until we met Hex 👇a16z.com/2022/03/22/inv…

  

  a16z.comInvesting in Hex | Andreessen HorowitzMuch has been discussed, written, and reconfigured around the modern data stack – and for good reason, it’s one of the most significant shifts in data architecture of our time. But as close followers of its evolution, one of the …

• The “AWS for testers” announced their Series C round this week 💸

  Congratulations to LambdaTest!

  LambdaTest @lambdatesting

  We are happy to announce that we have raised $45M in a round led by Premji Invest with participation from existing investors.🎉 We want to use this opportunity to thank our customers, investors, & team members for trusting and supporting us. Here's to growing stronger, together!

• End-to-end encrypted document editor Skiff announced $10.5M in Series A funding led by Sequoia 💻

  Skiff @skiffprivacy

  Today's the day we announce our Series A - led by @sequoia 🌲🌳🌴 And covered by @zackwhittaker 📰 techcrunch.com/2022/03/30/ski…

  

  techcrunch.comSkiff bags $10.5M to build private/collaborative workspaces – TechCrunchThe startup already has more than 20,000 people using its end-to-end encrypted document editor.

Launches, events, and releases

• Figma now supports right-to-left languages 👇

  Figma @figma

  انتهى وقت الانتظار: أصبحت لغات الاتجاه من اليمين لليسار متاحة في كلّ من Figma وFigJam 🥳 أصبح بإمكانك الآن الكتابة وصياغة المحتوى بأي من لغات الاتجاه من اليمين لليسار، بما في ذلك العربية والعبرية والأوردو. مزيد من المعلومات: bit.ly/36IQxsW

• YC Demo Day will feature 400 startups from 42 countries 🌎

  Y Combinator @ycombinator

  Today, we're kicking off our 34th Demo Day — featuring founders from 42 countries and over 400 startups building in every sector, from fintech, B2B SaaS, Web3, consumer, healthcare, education, climate, energy, and more. Meet the YC Winter 2022 batch:

  

  ycombinator.comMeet the YC Winter 2022 Batch | Y CombinatorFor the Winter 2022 batch, we received 17,000 applications from founders around the world and funded 414. Today, these founders will present their companies to an invite-only audience of investors at Y Combinator’s 34th Demo Day.

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

What does today’s PM Stack look like, compared to a year ago?

The results of Lenny’s informal survey saw Loom, Coda, and Github climb up the list and a pattern emerge of decreasing reliance on spreadsheets.

Lenny Rachitsky 🇺🇦🇺🇸 | lennysan.eth @lennysan

PM Stack, one year later: 🏆 Top: @SlackHQ @NotionHQ @figma @Jira @MiroHQ @googledocs (same as 2021) ⬆️ Up: @loom @Zoom @linear @asana @coda_hq @github ⬆️ Down: @trello @msexcel @googlesheets ↔️ Staying strong: @Confluence @productboard @airtable @MicrosoftTeams @whimsical

Lenny Rachitsky 🇺🇦🇺🇸 | lennysan.eth @lennysan

Final results of the informal Product Manager stack survey Surprises: 1. @SlackHQ 🥇 2. @MiroHQ at 6th 3. @NotionHQ over @googledocs 4. @WhimsicalPowers in top 20 5. For tasks: @Jira ➡️ @trello ➡️ @productboard ➡️ @asana ➡️ @linear_app ➡️ @mondaydotcom ➡️ @clickup https://t.co/CPeqGLVoJc https://t.co/k8Ou9UjJu9

---

---

Some housekeeping…

Is your mailbox trying to keep our content away from you! 💔 What can you do about it? Mark this email as ‘not spam’ 😱 or move it from your promotions to the primary folder 👉🏻 It’s very easy!

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends if you feel like it.

---

How did you like this week’s newsletter?

Legend 🤩 - Great 😄 - Good 🙂 - OK 😶 - Meh 😒