👋 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 🐦🌌

• 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?

  October 8th 2021

  1 Retweet280 Likes

  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.

  October 9th 2021

  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.

  October 8th 2021

  1 Retweet21 Likes

• 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.

  October 8th 2021

  55 Retweets694 Likes

• 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

  October 8th 2021

  14 Retweets285 Likes

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… 👩🏻‍🍳💋

October 13th 2021

4 Retweets22 Likes

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

Top of the Lyne

An ode to Substack

Humanity’s success has always revolved around our ability to band together in large groups and work towards audacious goals. Whether it be building the pyramids or putting a man on the moon. But there has been one key enabler to these large-scale collaborative pursuits - trust! More so, trust in institutions. Institutions like religions, constitutions, …

Read more

7 months ago · 2 likes · Arjun Rakesh and Ruchin Kulkarni

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 👇👇👇

  

  October 13th 2021

  174 Retweets1,810 Likes

• 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/ Notion 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.forbes.com

  October 8th 2021

  16 Retweets233 Likes

• 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

  October 7th 2021

  10 Retweets30 Likes

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

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