Can non-SaaS be PLG? Gitlab goes public, Stripe acquires Recko, and more...

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Oct 21, 2021

👋 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 ❤️

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Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

GitLab IPO = 2 x GitHub acquisition! 🤯
GitLab went public last week rising to a market cap of over $15B! That makes Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub 3 years ago look like an absolute steal considering GitHub in 2018 was at a larger revenue scale than GitLab is in 2021 SaaS outcomes always surprise!

🦊 GitLab @gitlab

🔔 “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Look at how far we have been able to go together at GitLab, where we believe #EveryoneCanContribute. $GTLB at @Nasdaq

“PLG is just for SaaS” 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩
Some of the most interesting PLG companies in the world are in fact not SaaS companies! PLG as a philosophy has enabled some of the largest fintech and edtech outcomes! Think Toast, Plaid, Robinhood, Byjus…

Kyle Poyar @poyark

My latest newsletter unpacks the Toast IPO and why the hardware + FinTech company is betting on #PLG to fuel its next act. Take a look.

kylepoyar.substack.comInside Toast’s 🔥 IPOWhy the company is betting on PLG to fuel its next act

Startups build. Giants acquire! 💰
Friend of the newsletter, Ali Abouletta paints an interesting picture of the power of acquisitions and how it’s fueled Atlassian’s explosion in market cap over the years 📈

Ali Abouelatta @abouelatta_ali

I research and write about how startups got their first 1,000 customers. Here’s how Atlassian bootstrapped a business and eventually set up the most unique “acquisition-led growth” engine the world has ever seen!

Peeking under the hood of Calendly and Dropbox’s virality 🔥
Ryan Kaufman (aka growth student) demystifies the growth loops that power giants like Calendly and Dropbox!

Ryan Kaufman🎓 @growth_student

If you’re a SaaS founder, you need to study Product Led Growth How Calendly, Dropbox leveraged product led growth to scale A thread👇👇

Growth Stories 🚀

The tactics and strategies that raised Notion to 20M+ users and a $10B valuation 🚀

Selling picks and shovels: Built the lego blocks for a
more productive world 🛠
Nurturing community: r/notion now has 150k+ users 🤝
Going international: 85%+ of users are outside the US 🌏
Learn more 👇🏻

Top of the Lyne

Notion: the all-in-one productivity tool

Human progress has been on an absolute tear over the last hundred years. Although it's easy to get lost in overwhelmingly polarized narratives around the problems we face as a species, the reality is that there has never been a better time to be alive…

a year ago · 3 likes · Arjun Rakesh and Ruchin Kulkarni

New podcast episode alert! 🚨 Find out how Productboard is becoming the Salesforce for product management 👇🏻 Make sure to follow the channel on Spotify for weekly updates

Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

SaaS is moving eastward 🙌🏻
PLG has made it easier than ever for SaaS companies to build in the East and sell in the West! Valley companies beware… The Times They Are a-Changin' 🎶
Stripe announced its acquisition of Recko marking the company’s first acquisition in India. The 2020s are the era of SaaS being built out

Patrick Collison @patrickc

We’re super bullish on the startup ecosystem outside the US. Recko, headquartered in Bangalore, enables automated financial operations, with properly designed, real-time abstractions rather clunky, manual workflows.

Stripe @stripe

Stripe + Recko: https://t.co/e0TBB7wJq4

Copy.ai ✍🏻 raised an $11M Series A from who’s who of SaaS investors - Sequoia, Craft, Tiger, Elad Gil, you name it. Super excited for one of our favorite marketing tools to blitzscale! ⚡️

Paul Yacoubian @PaulYacoubian

Announcing our $11m Series A round at copy.ai from Wing Ventures, Craft Ventures, Sequoia, Tiger Global, Elad Gil, and many amazing investors! 🙌

copy.aiCopyAI: Create Marketing Copy In SecondsWe have created the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence copywriter that enables you to create marketing copy in seconds!

The onslaught of PLG IPOs continues! 🤑
GitLab made its entry into the public markets last week and traded up to $15B, leaving the world of PLG enthused and former GitHub employees enraged (just a guess 🙈 )

Launches, events, and releases

FigJam has some exciting updates for us 💝
1. Price cut! Pro plans is now $3 / seat (from $8) and Org plans cost $5 / seat ( from $5) per seat
2. Plugins and widgets
3. ‘Open sessions

Is there anything Canva can’t do? 🤩

Melanie Perkins @MelanieCanva

We're incredibly excited to unveil Canva's new Video Suite, bringing the magic of Canva to video editing for anyone, on any device ✨ Congratulations to our epic video team who brought this to life, we can't wait to see what you all create with it! ▶️

bit.lyIntroducing Canva Video SuiteEveryone is consuming video at a massive scale, from content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, to workplace training tutorials and online fitness classes. But video tools have either been too…

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Sam Crowell Richard from OpenView partners lays out guidelines for hiring your ‘Growth Person’

Hire a farmer, not a hunter
Look for a go-getter
Failures matter
Avoid pattern-matching

Learn more

Here’s some more reason why you should follow Sam 👇🏻

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