Just another glorified newsletter tool 🗞

Fresh off the PLG Press: Substack supremancy🙌🏼, PLG Flywheels 🎡 & the one tool to help you sleep better 😏

👋 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 🐦🌌

• Just another glorified newsletter tool 🗞

  Just one of the many criticisms I heard about Substack during my former life as a VC:

  • “Why would any one writer pay 10% of revenue to an emailing tool?”

  • “Wouldn’t the best writers graduate out of Substack as their subscriber base grows?”

  • “Why would a writer pay a 10% tax to a platform that does not help them grow revenue”

  • “Newsletters are dead”

  All valid concerns. Okay, maybe not the last one. All until… Substack recommendations went live. And boy has that changed things.

  

  Substack after launching recommendations

  As an example, Substack recommendations is now driving 72% of Lenny’s subscriber growth. And more interestingly, 10% of his paid subscriber growth 🚀

  In Lenny’s own words… Substack is now “covering their fees”

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

Wild. Substack now drives 10% of my paid subscriber growth (covering their fees 👌), and *72%* of my free subscriber growth. Network effects in action 🚀

And its not just Lenny’s Newsletter. Here’s how Growth Unhinged grew from 0 to 10k+ plus in 18 months. Guess what happened towards the second half of next year?

So, New York Times - what’s the next Substack hit piece going to be about?

• How to manage your board 101 👩🏻‍💼

  A masterclass on navigating board meetings for first-time presenters. The TLDR -

  • Speak English, not Marketing

  • Be consistent & repetitive across meetings

  • And relax… The board is on your side

    Jaleh Rezaei @jalehr

    Preparing for my first board meeting as Gusto's Head of Marketing was painful. I felt lost, scared and self-conscious. I wish I had a playbook for navigating the board. So I put one together. Here's my 3C framework—everything CMOs need to nail the board meeting:

• Viral Cycle Time ♼

  One of the core growth metrics driving the growth of TikTok, and now ClickUp!

  

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🔎 The PLG hunt

It’s cool to be nice, bro. 🐶

Says Kona.

And we agree. 🙌🏼

Making mental health check-ins easier for remote teams, fighting burn-out, and helping remote teams feel at home, Kona is putting the “human” back in Human Resources.

Loved by teams at Buffer and Canva, Kona turns emotional signals into data points, that help cos. fight attrition, lack of motivation, and a LOT MORE! ❤️

Oh, and they also just raised a sweet seed round. 👏🏽

Kona @getkona

Kona's mission is to make empathy mainstream at work. Today, we're one step closer to that. We're thrilled to announce our $4M seed round led by @Unusual_VC. Learn more about the news from our CEO, @pandiyasid:

buff.lyAnnouncing Kona’s $4M Seed Round Led by Unusual Ventures | KonaAt Kona we’re excited to share that we’ve raised $4M in seed funding to help remote companies stay on top of employee wellbeing.

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

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Growth Stories 🚀

CommonRoom should be commonplace!✨

Loved by teams across, Figma, HubSpot, Webflow, and many others, CommonRoom is an intelligent community growth platform that brings community engagement, product usage, and customer data into a single place.😍

We become roomies and find out the BTS behind their $300M valuation!💖

Common Room should be commonplace

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Fundraising, Venture Capital, and Exits 🤑

• Headroom raises $9Mn 💵

Headroom’s AI-powered videoconferencing technology, led by ex-Googler Julian Green is making heads turn (quite literally).

The round was led by Equal Opportunity Ventures with participation from Gradient Ventures, LDV Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, and Morado Ventures.

TechCrunch @TechCrunch

AI-powered videoconferencing platform Headroom raises $9M tcrn.ch/3dZfjsF by @Kyle_L_Wiggers

tcrn.chAI-powered videoconferencing platform Headroom raises $9M – TechCrunchHeadroom, which is leveraging AI to power features of its videoconferencing platform, has raised $9 million in venture capital.

Launches, events, and releases

• Gain more time with Morgen ⏰

  
  Manage your calendars, to-do apps, productivity tools, schedulers, and most importantly: Get👏🏽Back👏🏽 Your👏🏽 Time👏🏽 with Morgen!
  
  (Oh, and of course, it integrates with everything you love!)

Product Hunt 😸 @ProductHunt

This time management hub brings your calendars, to-dos, productivity apps and schedulers into one platform. No more flipping between apps and tabs: meow.ph/morgen

• The Future is Video(SDK) 🔮
  

  VideoSDK helps you build highly interactive and immersive experiences with our cutting-edge live audio and video SDKs.
  

  Made by developers 🤝 for developers
  
  Oh, they’re also #1 on Product of the Day on ProductHunt - no surprises there 😏

  Video SDK @video_sdk

  🎉 Hooray!! We are the #1 Product of the Day on @ProductHunt 🥳 Overwhelmed by all the love and support we’ve received 😇 Check it out here: producthunt.com/posts/video-sd… #1ProductoftheDay #producthunt #productlaunch #devtools

  

• Going Tweeting around in Circle(s)

  
  Circle allows you to tweet to a selected group of people. From Drake to your best friend, 150 people of your choice can access your unhinged thoughts through your circle.
  

  Close Friends, much?👀
  
  

  Twitter @Twitter

  giving you all Twitter Circle because sometimes your Tweets aren’t for everyone add up to 150 people to yours and use it. please.

  

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Discover everything about the product-led growth flywheel 🎡

The four user segments: Evaluators🤔 - Beginners🆕 - Regulars💪🏻 - Champions🙌🏼 and the key actions you need your users to take for them to move across the funnel. ➡

A solid framework for making your PLG fly through the roof! 💥 Check it out.

Blazing Hot Meme Zone ⚡️

Toplyne: Helping you sleep better! 😎

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Know someone that would enjoy reading this? Go on, spread the joy 👇🏼

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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.

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