How to buy communities and influence people, Shopify's rocky year, conversions aren't magic, 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 ❤️

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Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

• Building 👷‍♀️ vs. Buying communities 🛒

  PLG companies are buying communities wholesale…

  Dave Gerhardt @davegerhardt

  Outreach bought Sales Hacker. Zapier bought Makerpad. HubSpot bought The Hustle. Pendo buys Mind The Product. This trend will only continue… Community first even in B2B SaaS.

  And for good reason! They’re f$#!ing hard to build in house… what with all the OKR responsibilities and ARR targets 🙄

  Dave Gerhardt @davegerhardt

  Also - the reason why these communities / sites were successful is that they were independent. Not owned by a vendor. Even if a B2B SaaS co wants to start a community, it so often goes to shit because the company goals are not aligned with what actually makes community work.

• PLG conversions don’t just magically happen 🪄

  The PLG ecosystem can often make conversions sound as though they just “magically happen”… as though sales teams & marketing nudges have next to no impact on a customer’s decision to buy vs. not! Couldn’t be more INCORRECT 🙅🏻‍♂️

  Here’s how ActiveCampaign made sure Ryan converted to a paying customer through the course of a 14-day trial…

  • Nudges: 4 phone calls, 16 emails

  • 4 categories of emails

    • Jumpstart: Immediately after signup - Quickstart guide to create automations, connect tools, setup campaigns, schedule demos

    • Social proof: "26,000+ people use this automation"… why should you?

    • Templates: 125+ beautiful email templates, 48 landing page templates

    • Sales: The sales rep assigned to Ryan also sent follow up emails

      and communicated that it's his job to make sure Ryan gets the most out of the trial

  Ryan Kaufman🎓 @growth_student

  ActiveCampaign has 150K customers with $165M ARR I started a 14-day trial Here's their 4 part email marketing strategy and how it converted me to a paying customer A thread👇👇

• Taking feedback constructively like Shopify 👂🏻

  Shopify’s stock is down 50% over the last year… and fell over 8% just yesterday. Now if you’re like Shopify and have millions of merchant customers… you’re going to want to hear what you need to do better… 👇🏻

  This thread by Moiz (customer + shareholder @ Shopify) is a masterclass in providing useful constructive feedback:

  • Shopify Analytics needs to improve: Cohorts, LTV calculations to help merchants measure their channel effectiveness and enable them to spend more when the LTV makes sense

  • Shopify Subscriptions need to exist

  • Audience Sharing: Shopify could create an audience sharing system that would allow merchants to opt-in to an anonymous Facebook audience share with non-competing brands… reduces marketing costs for all!

  Moiz Ali @moizali

  1. Shopify stock is down 50% over the past 12 months. Its mission may be to "arm the rebels," but it is giving us muskets in a war that is increasingly being fought with machine guns. 👇👇👇

  And here’s how the best founders acknowledge and take feedback:

  tobi lutke @tobi

  @moizali good feedback. thank you

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🔎 The PLG hunt

• Popsicles - The future of data teams? 🍡

  According to Gartner,  "through 2023, data scientists and analysts will lose 60% to 70% of their productive time to activities like finding, preparing, integrating and sharing datasets."

  PopSQL was born from Rahil Sondhi's frustrations with existing SQL editors. The need for a collaborative, beautiful, and easy-to-use tool that he believes can disrupt the way teams analyze and share data the same way Slack disrupted communication was obvious.

  With their latest round of funding, PopSQL is hiring at scale to accelerate their mission of helping data teams turn business insights into action more quickly, accurately, and efficiently.

  PopSQL @popsql

  Announcing our $14M Series A led by Tiger Global, with participation from @GradientVC, @ycombinator, and @FundersClub 🍭🥳 We're excited to use these resources to create the best collaborative experience for data teams popsql.com/updates/series…

  

  popsql.comPopSQL Raises $14M Series A from Tiger Global to Help Data Teams Collaborate - PopSQLI’m excited to announce PopSQL’s latest round of funding, a $14M Series A round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused venture fund), Y Combinator, and FundersClub.

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

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Growth Stories 🚀

18 months in the life of Airbyte:

🔴 16k+ deployments

🚀 10k+ customers

💯 100s of connectors

💰 180M+ raised

🧁 A sweet $1.5B valuation to deservedly top it all off

Airbyte and their army of contributors are revolutionizing data integration - one connector at a time. Read about the growth strategies behind the hottest addition to the Modern Data Stack 🚀

Plumbing with Airbyte

For those of you who prefer audio over print, Notion’s growth story podcast is now live on the Top of the Lyne Podcast channels. Tune in 🎙

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Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

• Data Isn’t Easy To Use, So People Aren’t Using It 🙅‍♀️

  Collaborative analytics platform Promethium raised their $26M Series A that hopes to erase data friction and slash the time it takes to answer questions.

  Promethium, Inc. @PromethiumI

  Big news! We raised a $26 million Series A for our next-generation collaborative analytics platform. The funding was led by @insightpartners, with participation from existing investors @406Ventures and @ZettaVentures. Read the letter from the CEO: pm61data.com/post/letter-fr…

  

Launches, events, and releases

• Slack’s 11 must-haves for remote work 👩🏻‍💻

  Slack is partnering with 11 essential tools (including Canva, Loom, Notion, Miro, Zapier, and more) and launching limited-time offers on their business plans

  Slack @SlackHQ

  We're always looking for ways to make it easier to use your favorite tools in Slack. With our new toolkit, it's easier—and more affordable too. 💥 💸 bit.ly/3HODlQY @salesforcesmb @loom @NotionHQ @canva @ActiveCampaign @brexHQ @MiroHQ @asana @zapier @DocuSign @awscloud

  

  bit.ly11 essential tools for your startup’s digital-first workplaceYour toolkit for remote or hybrid work is now more affordable. Access limited-time offers on all the essentials for your business.

• Get the low-down on PLG positioning via live sessions, real-life case studies from industry experts - courtesy of The Product Folks! 🚀

  The Product Folks 🚀 @TheProductfolks

  🎉 Thrilling news 🎉 We’re taking you on an exciting journey to ace your growth, the product style 💯 Launching Product Led Growth series powered by @netcore_cloud and @mixpanel Apply here: theproductfolks.com/product-led-gr… #GrowingWithTPF

  

  theproductfolks.comLearn Product-led Growth | Free Live MasterclassProduct Led Growth is a comprehensive live online course to teach you the fundamentals of growth and everything else you need to ace your career!

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

We’re currently nerding out on Bessemer Venture Partners’ deep-dive on the merits and perils of introducing a top-down enterprise sales motion to a bottom-up PLG company. The lessons learned from Auth0, Hashicorp, Imply, PagerDuty, and Twilio all indicate that rather than disrupt, an ideal enterprise motion should serve to amplify the product-led ethos. More on the foundational practices below 👇

Elliott Robinson @TheValuesVC

Bottoms-up momentum + Product Led Growth is amazing! But even the best PLG startups have to spin up enterprise sales in order to scale ARR from $10M ➡️ $100M ➡️ $1B+ 🧵@NextBigTeng & I break down 6⃣ best practices on how to make this GTM magic happen!👇🏽bit.ly/3uShSDa

bit.lyIntroducing enterprise sales to a product-led growth organizationSix tactics when introducing enterprise sales to a product-led growth business model.

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