Is PLG freemium rebranded? Notion at $10B, Microsoft acquires Ally, 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 🐦🌌

• Is PLG = Freemium + Virality, rebranded?!? 🤔

  Well… yes ✅ and no ❌

  Zachary Perret from Plaid asks a pertinent question on PLG 👇🏻 A question we wrestled with for the longest time!

  Zachary Perret @zachperret

  Is "Product-Led Growth" just a rebrand of freemium and viral loops?

  James Kaikis made a great point - there’s finally a real GTM process powering PLG! Top of funnel, activation, PQLs (product qualified leads), Sales team, Customer Success, Account management, all working at heightened levels of efficiency thanks to #PLG 🚀

  James Kaikis @JamesKaikis

  @jasonlk @zachperret And maybe finally a real GTM process around it.

  Jason Lemkin’s adds - the modern PLG GTM is finally instrumented and tooled for the job 👇🏻 Think Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, and many more ⚡️

  Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ @jasonlk

  @zachperret Yeah. But with much better instrumentation and tools.

• Money 💰 = Time ⏰

  As markets get crazier and PLG companies (and founders) get hotter 🔥 Harry Hurst had an insightful reminder of what raising money really buys, time. Pipe has burnt less than 5% of what they’ve raised! A shoutout to a company that has emerged as one of the strongest enablers of product-led growth (without dilution 😉 )

  Harry Hurst @harryhurst

  One of the biggest myths I see perpetuated is that you have to burn money just because you raised it. @pipe we’ve burned less than 5% of the capital we’ve raised. A strong balance sheet gives you leverage to grow. It gives you time, the most precious thing. Burn with caution.

• Much like Messi ⚽️ it took Notion a decade of work to be an overnight success! 🦄

  Jason Lemkin reminds us of the tough early years Notion (much like many other wildly successful startups) faced on its road to becoming a decacorn last week ⭐️

  Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ @jasonlk

  Notion is an incredible $10B overnight success story Note it was founded as a company in 2012/2013, however Sometimes you don't see the tough early years

---

Growth Stories 🚀

This weeks article was a Substack on Substack 😵‍💫 … Thanks for the shoutout, Lulu 🙌🏻

Lulu Cheng Meservey @lulumeservey

This graphic by Top of the Lyne… 👩🏻‍🍳💋

Here’s how Substack is reimagining publishing in the modern world and grew to a mind-boggling $650M in the process 👇🏻

An ode to Substack

Also, we’re back with a new podcast episode! Find out how Figma layered their bottoms-up PLG motion with a kickass sales team to build a $10B SaaS giant!👇🏻 Make sure to follow the channel on Spotify for weekly updates

---

Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

• Did you bet against Bolt when things got rough over the last few years? The jokes on you 🤭 Raising $393M at a massive $6B valuation they are very much up and kicking! 🔥

  Ryan Breslow 🕺 @ryantakesoff

  🚨Big announcement today: Bolt raises $393M. Wow. A couple years ago, I didn’t know if we were going to make it. Now we have $500M+ on the balance sheet. I wanted to share a bit more about where we've been, but more importantly where we're going 👇👇👇

  

• Notion rides the remote work wave to 20M active users (you and I included, right? 😅) and a valuation of…

  wait for it…

  $10B 💰🤯

  Mike Vernal @mvernal

  Very excited to partner with @ivanhzhao, @akothari and the team at @NotionHQ! Notion has become a global phenomenon and is on its way to becoming the operating system for work across teams and enterprises. 1/

  

  forbes.comNotion Reaches $10 Billion Valuation, Boosted By Remote Work — And TikTokNotion has raised $275 million from Coatue, Sequoia and Base10 as users of the work app increased 5x from the pandemic’s early days, to more than 20 million.

• Microsoft acquires 3-year-old OKR specialists Ally.io 💰

  Ally.io @Allydotio

  Big news today. Ally.io has been acquired by Microsoft!

  

  Microsoft Stories and News @MSFTnews

  #Microsoft is pleased to announce the acquisition of @Allydotio, a leader in the OKR space. Ally will join the #MSFTViva family as part of our employee experience platform. Learn more: https://t.co/uu09EHz9Ad https://t.co/mhATVW7S6I

Launches, events, and releases

• Crypto stans rejoice! 🤩 Stripe has hired a 3 member crypto team and the payment giants’ re-entry into the industry is very close!

• Toronto-based password management tool 1password releases a new feature that lets users share credentials over links 🔗

• Instagram adds scheduling and ‘practice mode’ features for Live creators 👨🏻‍🎨

---

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Jennifer Li from a16z discusses the role research plays in a Product-led organization and shares tactics on how one could adopt a research mentality. Find out more

---

---

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.