Freshworks goes public, Fivetran raises at $5.6B, 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)

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Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

1. (Indian) software is eating the world: Freshwork’s public listing is a story straight out of a movie. From being told they “CANT” win to listing on the Nasdaq, Kyle Poyar summarizes the things Freshworks got right! ✅

   • Focusing on users, not just buyers: Existing vendors designed their products for executive buyers at the expense of frontline employees. Music to a young disruptor’s ears 🎶

   • Focus on being found ‘organically’ via free, low-cost channels and often guerilla channels - they even flew a #Failsforce blimp over Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. The blimp was meant to highlight ‘bloated’ legacy products 😅

   • The power of self-service: Freshworks puts its money where its mouth is, making it simple and easy for folks to trial the product and quickly onboard users. There are 21-day free trials for nearly every Freshworks product

     Kyle Poyar @poyark

     “You can’t win.” - My latest post unpacks how @FreshworksInc rewrote the conventional SaaS growth playbook on its way to a $9B IPO #saas #plg #IPO

     

     kylepoyar.substack.comYou can’t winHow Freshworks rewrote the traditional SaaS growth playbook

2. SaaS as a means to an end (read, bank 🤑) … emerging markets might be the hotbed of SaaS business model innovation 🧪

   Sudheendra Chilappagari @webaficionado

   Give away SaaS for free (to acquire customers) but monetize via financial services (payments, lending etc.) seems to be a widely accepted fundraising narrative in emerging markets like India and LatAm. Know any startup that has truly delivered on this promise? Genuine question.

3. Toast went public yesterday! Who said a hardware business can’t be product-led 🙌🏻 Here’s an investment memo from their first institutional investor - BVP!

   Mary D'Onofrio @mcadonofrio

   🥂 Toasting $TOST to celebrate its IPO! 🍞 From @kentbennett leading its first institutional round to adding it to @BessemerVP Growth's portfolio, it is incredible to see how Toast has transformed the restaurant industry over time. The beginning 👇 bvp.com/memos/toast

   

   bvp.comToast

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Growth Stories 🚀

One billion knowledge workers spend roughly three years of their entire lives reading and writing emails. Superhuman lets them do it 2x faster ⚡️

For $30/mo what Superhuman truly sells is the gift of more time 😌

This weeks growth story covers how they did it….👇🏻

How Superhuman monetized time! The world's rarest resource

Gaurav Vohra, Head of Strategy @ Superhuman was kind enough to connect with us after our blog post 😊 Gaurav set up a lot of the key functions at the company (onboarding, success, delight, growth…), scaled them from 0 to 1, built repeatability, and moved on to build the next function. We asked him what enabled him to succeed at what most struggle with… His response was insightful and a reminder as to the strength of core values in driving outcomes!

Gaurav Vohra: “I think there’s some table stakes qualities and skills you need to bring such as identifying the customer need, problem solving, being able to hire, being able to manage a team. But I’d say the guiding light at least for me was sticking to our core values as a company (delight, quality, intentionality) so that even if the problems were new there was consistency in how to approach them. Having clear company values is a critical step towards helping the team identify whether a solution is going to be any good.”

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Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

1. Freshworks rang the bell at Nasdaq yesterday listing at a $10B IPO valuation and popping to over $13B! 🚀

   Girish Mathrubootham @mrgirish

   Today is a dream come true for me - from humble beginnings in #Trichy to ringing the bell at @Nasdaq for the FreshWorks IPO. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for believing in this dream. #Freshworks #IPO #NASDAQ

   

2. Fivetran hauls $ 565 million on a valuation of $ 5.6 billion and acquires competitor HVR for $ 700 million

   Fivetran @ #mdscon @fivetran

   Today, we’re announcing that we’ve raised $565M in series D funding. We’re also thrilled to welcome @HVR_Software to the Fivetran family.

3. Sunday raises $100 million for its fast restaurant checkout flow 💰

Launches, events, and releases

1. Slack launched features to natively record video, audio, and screen-shares in any channel/DM! Async comms FTW 💯

   Noah Desai Weiss @noah_weiss

   Today, @SlackHQ we rolled out new #DigitalHQ capabilities to natively record video, audio, and screen-shares in any channel/DM. Want to keep your team feeling connected without 9-5 video meetings? Clips offers flexible, rich ways to communicate async. 3 favorite use cases ⤵️

   

2. Sprig (formerly UserLeap) recently launched In-Product Microsurveys to make a better email survey experience

3. Offline conferences are back 🔥 SaaStr Annual is scheduled for Sep 27-29 in San Mateo

   Stacey Epstein @staceyepstein

   100% vaccinated, outside conference, Sept 27-29, San Mateo. #plg @FreshworksInc More details: saastrannual2021.com

   

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Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Switch From Lead-Centric To Account-Centric Marketing

and more tactics that the PLG reimagined marketing functions must take care of 👇🏻

Marketing In An Era Of Product-Led Growth by Shawn Herring, VP of Marketing at PandaDoc

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