Prediction! ClickUp to win the Superbowl, PLG ages like fine wine, a shade of narcissism

👋 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 🐦🌌

• PLG goes mainstream ⚡️

  Tune in on Feb 13th to see history being made… the PLG industry goes mainstream with its very own Superbowl ad 🏈

  

  Thank you, ClickUp 🙏🏻

ClickUp @clickup

Blue 42, set hut...WE'VE MADE IT TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!🏈 That's right—catch our ✨big game day debut✨ this Feb. 13th when we showcase our "Declaration" ad on NBC!🤩🎬 Read all about it in @Adweek: bit.ly/3giwLWM

bit.lyHow ClickUp Created Its First Super Bowl AdThe spot will air regionally in 14 markets.

• Aging like fine wine 🍷

  The Top 20 public PLG/freemium companies are growing faster today than they did last year 🤯

  Why? 10/10 recommend Jason Lemkin’s thread for the deep dive… TL;DR below 👇🏻

  • Cracking the “dirty” art of sales: Asana has a 60:40 ARR split on self-serve vs sales. That number is trending to 50:50 this year and will move over to the sales heavy in coming years

  • Going upmarket: 80% of Datadog’s ARR comes from customers paying $100k+… this used to be 80% small customers just a few years ago

  • Growing with your customers: 60% of Expensify’s Customers started off in the Free edition, even at IPO!

  • More on this 🧵 below

  Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin @jasonlk

  The other day I did a deep look at the Top 20 public SaaS companies doing PLG and freemium As a group, they are all growing >faster< than last year, at an average of $400m in ARR. Which is just incredible! My Top 20 learnings here: 🔽🔽🔽🔽🔽

  Need more proof? Check out Bill.com’s ARR acceleration… growing ~4x faster at $240M ARR than at $158M 🚀

  Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin @jasonlk

  There's acceleration in SaaS Then there's Bill.com's acceleration 51% growth at $158m ARR -> 190% growth at $240m ARR Pick your jaw up off the floor

  

• Coincidence or destiny? 🔮

  While unicorns might be rarer than a Stradivarius 🎻 … it’s no surprise that the world’s 1000th unicorn is a PLG company 🙌🏻 Congratulations Productboard on the Series D!

  Productboard @productboard

  Spotted: the 1000th unicorn🦄 on a billboard in Times Square! We're thrilled to share that we've raised $125M in Series D funding led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management, landing us a place as the 1000th unicorn across the globe 🌏. lnkd.in/e2AHETW5

  

  And in what now looks like a stroke of Nolan-esque foreshadowing coupled with a shade of narcissism… here’s a piece we wrote in September 2021 about “How Productboard will become the Salesforce of product management” 😎

How Productboard will become the Salesforce of product management 🚀

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🔎 The PLG hunt

• “Data science is overdue for the benefits of tools that are cloud and collaboration native.”

  Deepnote is an IDE-like collaborative tool that abstracts away the infrastructure and provides data scientists with a cloud-based platform to build machine learning models. Built using Jupyter notebooks at its core with collaborative features layered on top, Deepnote is a game-changer for data science teams!

  Deepnote @DeepnoteHQ

  📣 We’re beyond excited to announce that we’ve raised $20M to help data teams do their best work! Our Series A round led by @Accel and @IndexVentures will allow us to bring in the brightest talent and build the best-in-class tool for analysts and data scientists

  

  With the new round of funding, Deepnote plans to build out the product and get a foothold in the data science community.

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

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Growth Stories 🚀

Webflow: From the brink of bankruptcy to revolutionizing web design

A case study in patience, perseverance, and great timing, it took four attempts, a brush with bankruptcy, a failed Kickstarter video shoot, and rejections from YC and countless investors before Vlad Magdalin took Webflow off the ground. And then into orbit. Here’s the Webflow story. It’s a nailbiter.👇

The Webflow state of mind

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Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

• Rudderstack, a platform that helps businesses build their own customer data platforms announced their series B round this week

  This after a great year, when the company’s revenue grew almost four and a half times, while its customer base tripled.

  RudderStack @RudderStack

  🎉 We raised a $56 million Series B, marking another major milestone as we enable data engineers everywhere to build better #data stacks. Thank you to all of our customers, investors, and partners for your continued support! More in @TechCrunch 👉 tcrn.ch/3J3Sj61

  

• Reverse ETL tool Census announced $60M in series B funding

  Tiger Global and Insight Partners joined existing investors Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

  Boris Jabes @borisjabes

  So excited to announce our $60M Series B! It's been a wild journey but every year gets more interesting, especially when growing 10x :-) I love the work we do @census – w/ operational analytics we make data teams the linchpin of their organization!

  

  blog.getcensus.com$60m to make operational analytics a reality | CensusWe’re excited to announce our Series B to help every data team power business-critical workflows.

Launches, events, and releases

• ClickUp’s Super-Bowl ad kicked derriers 📜

  ClickUp @clickup

  Okay—so you saw our official 30-second Super Bowl ad after we released it last week... Now it's time to peep the full, fresh, uncut version in all of its glory!🏆 We'd love to hear what you think! bit.ly/3J8TWiD #Superbowl #ClickUp

• Plenty of Sketch updates coming your way 💎

  Sketch @sketch

  It's time to update! ⏰ Head to sketch.com/updates or keep reading to find out what to expect in our latest release 🔽 (1/11)

  

  sketch.comDownload the latest Sketch software updatesFind all the latest releases, updates and bug fixes for the Sketch Mac App here. See what’s new and download older builds.

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Monthly churn across categories 🎢

The merits of tracking “monthly churn”, what separates good from great, correlations with pricing, and more.👇

Lenny Rachitsky | lennysan.eth @lennysan

What is GOOD and GREAT monthly churn—new benchmarks hot off the presses More in 🧵

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