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Is PLG just B2B viral growth? The USS Shopify thesis, memes are worth a thousand words, and more...

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This week in PLG 🗞

Is PLG just B2B viral growth? The USS Shopify thesis, memes are worth a thousand words, and more...

Ruchin Kulkarni
and
Arjun Rakesh
Nov 4, 2021
5
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Is PLG just B2B viral growth? The USS Shopify thesis, memes are worth a thousand words, and more...

www.topofthelyne.co

👋 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👇

Get early access to Toplyne for free 🤩


Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

  • Andrew Chen’s self-proclaimed “dumb” but profound question about PLG 🧐

    Is it just the B2B version of viral growth? Our take - the difference between PLG and traditional B2B products plays out in the impact on the role and efficiency of GTM teams

    1. Role: Who qualifies the lead? PLG ensures that the product qualifies whether a user is a prospective customer or not, instead of marketing and sales.

    2. Efficiency: PLG enables a higher level of sophistication for GTM functions like sales, account management & marketing. Leveraging product usage data to qualify PQLs enables these teams to operate at much higher levels of efficiency as compared to a traditional B2B GTM motion.

    We highly recommend going over the comments thread on Andrew’s tweet. Some terrific inputs from David Ulevitch, Ivan Kirigin, and Lenny Rachitsky.

Twitter avatar for @andrewchen
Andrew Chen 🇺🇸 @andrewchen
dumb question is "Product-Led Growth" the B2B variation of viral growth? Or is it more expansive. Looking for definitions and it seems like it's all over the place
7:19 PM ∙ Nov 2, 2021
216Likes9Retweets
  • USS Shopify! PLG companies at scale can be Aircraft Carriers 🛩

    Just look at Shopify! The company enables millions of merchants, three of which are already public companies 🤯

Twitter avatar for @tobi
Tobi Lütke @tobi
6 years after $SHOP IPO there are now 3 Shopify companies with their own ticker symbols
Image
6:48 PM ∙ Nov 3, 2021
2,423Likes151Retweets
  • Urgency is your friend! 🚨

    Jason Lemkin is like the gift who keeps giving 😅 Below is an interesting observation about a key aspect that separates the BEST salespeople from the MEDIOCRE - urgency! Don’t just wait for the Docusign to come back 😳

Twitter avatar for @jasonlk
Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ @jasonlk
The best sales professionals create urgency when there really isn't any ... and it's magic The mediocre just wait and wait for the e-signature to come
2:38 PM ∙ Oct 31, 2021
155Likes18Retweets
  • A meme is worth a thousand words 🤪

    No, we’re not joking! George Mack makes a terrific point about the power of memes. We live in the attention economy. Time is the only resource none of us have more of 🤷🏻‍♂️ And the attention war will be won by two unique entities:

    1. Monopolies like Netflix and Amazon who own abundant resources and owned distribution

    2. “Meme” creators who make up for their lack of power or capital through their understanding of the pulse of culture and their specific knowledge of platforms

    Most importantly, George defines a meme for what it truly is. Not a gif, not a joke, but the most disruptive force known to humanity - an idea! 🤔💭

Twitter avatar for @george__mack
George Mack @george__mack
Chief Meme Officer. Why it may become a job title soon.
Image
3:45 PM ∙ Oct 31, 2021
1,052Likes154Retweets

Growth Stories 🚀

On popular demand from our subscribers - this growth story on Clearbit 👇🏻! The growth tactics and GTM motion that power the API biz used by 1,500+ businesses including Stripe and Figma 🚀

  • Content content content 🗞 Leveraging SaaS influencers like Mark Roberge from HubSpot fame 🤩

  • Free tools for everyone! 🆓

  • No surprises here! Data-driven lead qualification 💰

Top of the Lyne
Clearbit: The rocket fuel 'enriching' PLG sales
Ask and you shall receive! 🖖🏻 Today’s article was a recommendation shared by some of our subscribers. If you have a favorite PLG company and you’d like to learn about the magic and sorcery 🪄 that powers their growth, hit us up in the comment section below…
Read more
a year ago · 6 likes · Arjun Rakesh, Rahul Krishnan, and Ruchin Kulkarni

Top of the Lyne podcasts is back with another episode! Tune in and listen to how Superhuman is monetizing the rarest resource of them all - Time! Follow us on Spotify for regular updates 😇

P.S - We’re not happy with spotify for getting the embed text wrong 🤨


Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

  • Freshworks is now worth more than Zendesk 🚀

    Once accused of being an “unethical troll trying to cash in on Zendesk’s good name” 🤨… Freshworks (earlier Freshdesk) switched positions at the table by overtaking Zendesk’s market cap, in what was a huge moment for SaaS founders building outside the hallowed halls of Silicon Valley!

    But how did they get there? Check out this thread below 👇🏻

    Twitter avatar for @prasanna_says
    Prasanna K @prasanna_says
    1/ Freshworks over taking ZenDesk in market cap is a huge moment for SaaS founders. Why is a company with ~$300Mn in trailing 12mo revenue valued higher than $Zen that is at $1000+Mn/yr? Why does $FRSH have a 40X multiple while $ZEN is at 10x and trending down?
    1:44 PM ∙ Nov 2, 2021
    144Likes20Retweets
  • Tiger’s “startup index fund” strategy 🤭

    In an industry driven by the power-law 💪🏻 maybe it makes sense to just do every good SaaS deal 🤷🏻‍♂️

    Twitter avatar for @jasonlk
    Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ @jasonlk
    Every SaaS VC: "I should have just done >every< good SaaS deal we saw the last few years" Tiger: "Exactly."
    3:33 PM ∙ Oct 31, 2021
    319Likes14Retweets
  • Refreshing pragmatism in an otherwise ridiculous market 😌

    Amjad Masad turned down a unicorn term sheet over the weekend… why? Well Replit doesn’t feel like its there yet. In a market obsessed with valuations and raises, we found this display of pragmatism by Amjad and the Replit team refreshing 😇

Twitter avatar for @amasad
Amjad Masad ⠕ @amasad
Turned down a $1b cap term sheet. Don’t feel like a unicorn yet, and folks joining us today will share the glory of getting there.
2:13 AM ∙ Nov 2, 2021
1,425Likes31Retweets
  • Metaverse! Gather.town raises $50M in series B so that you and I can ‘Gather’ online! 🙌🏻

    Twitter avatar for @flippnflops
    Phillip Wang @flippnflops
    Excited to announce that @gather_town has raised a $50M Series B led by @sequoia and @IndexVentures, with participation from @zoink, @jeffweiner, @ycombinator! Given all the Metaverse talk lately, we wanted to elaborate on what this means to us:
    gather.townWhy the Metaverse MattersOver the past year, “the Metaverse” has become a hot topic, with companies like Facebook, Roblox, and Epic Games now citing it as their end goal, or Microsoft making it a key strategic objective. However, missing from recent discussions about the Metaverse is how it will actually be good for people—…
    2:43 PM ∙ Nov 3, 2021
    829Likes102Retweets

Launches, events, and releases

  • Acquisition-led growth @ Notion! 🔥

    Notion took a page out of Atlassian’s M&A playbook and launched link previews! Enabled by their recent acquisition of Automate 🤝

    Twitter avatar for @akothari
    Akshay Kothari @akothari
    First of many @NotionHQ releases, that have been enabled by the @automate acquisition. https://t.co/FHj0H97CNG
    Twitter avatar for @NotionHQ
    Notion @NotionHQ
    Introducing: LINK PREVIEWS 🔗→🖼️ Create automatically up-to-date previews by pasting links to: • GitHub PRs • Jira issues • Slack messages • Trello cards • Asana tasks And we'll add support for more tools soon. This is just the beginning! https://t.co/Xo4N2KtlzE
    4:27 PM ∙ Nov 2, 2021

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Growth Superstar (we’re huge fans 🤩) Elena Verna talks about the 3 levers that make up a Growth Model

  • How do you acquire your customers

  • How do you monetize your customers

  • How do you retain your customers

and the growth personas that pull them

  • Innovator - the one with the hypotheses

  • Settler - the one who validates the hypotheses

  • The optimizers - the specialists who squeeze the maximum of a validated hypothesis



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Is PLG just B2B viral growth? The USS Shopify thesis, memes are worth a thousand words, and more...

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