Rarer than a profitable unicorn🦄

On not letting a good crisis go to waste🧘🏼‍♀️, the myth of clean data 🤷🏻‍♂️, Pendo's crazy ride so far🎢 and a lot, lot 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👇

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Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

• Well… Sign us the f^&k up for a thorough beat down 🥊

Des Traynor @destraynor

If you're a startup founder trying to take lessons from this chart about how Teams "beat" Slack, just remember that Slack was bought for $27,700,000,000, and then get back to work.

• Shots fired 💥

Retool @retool

Introducing Retool Database—now in private beta. We’re giving you the power of a SQL database and the speed of a spreadsheet right inside Retool: 📥 Import CSVs or start fresh 🏗️ Build apps and manage your data together 🚢 Ship changes safely across environments

• Rarer than a profitable unicorn… the myth of clean data 🦄
  

  We see growth teams and young startups beating themselves up over bad data every single day. You’re not alone folks!
  
  Apple didn’t know whether they sold 2.1 or 2.2 billion iPhones. Bad data is a fact of life… that’s why we built Toplyne to work DESPITE it 🤷🏻‍♂️

Megan Kao -📍London @megankao_

At DoorDash, I was always frustrated by data accuracy… How can big co’s have bad data? Then I found out Apple also has trouble confirming if they sold 2.1 or 2.2 BILLION iPhones 📱 Guys, the margin of error is in 100 millions.

• 1-2-5 years 🔥

  A beautiful thread on never letting a good crisis go to waste 🚀

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🔎 The PLG hunt

Can do, with Candu 👩🏻‍💻

A drag and drop editor that lets companies like Gorgias, UserTesting, and Salsify publish in-product content and create personalized user journeys, without extra engineering efforts. 🙌🏼

Better product-led experiences without any code? Can do, with Candu! 💪🏻 
[sorry, we just had to! 😅]

Candu @CanduLabs

So excited to be featured on @TechCrunch today! Shout out to the one and only @alex for covering our $5M seed funding round—which will help us bring Candu's #nocode native web builder to SaaS. #candu #nowyoucan

tcrn.chCandu raises $5M to help software companies onboard users intelligently – TechCrunchThis morning Candu, a software startup that provides no-code web tools for SaaS apps, announced a $5 million funding round. TechCrunch caught up with founder Jonathan Anderson and lead investor Villi Iltchev, a partner at Two Sigma Ventures, to chat about the deal. First thing: This round, a bit li…

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

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Growth Stories 🚀

One Software to give All Software a GLOW UP! ✨

Pendo is proving its pendo (aka Latin for value) to Salesforce, Zendesk, Coursera, Mimecast, and over 6K+ more customers by helping them continuously better their product experience. 💪🏻

We dive deep to uncover the BTS that got Pendo to the coveted $150M+ ARR and whopping $2.6B+ valuation. 🤯 Check it out. 👇🏼

Creating $2.6B+ 'Pendo' with Pendo

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Fundraising, Venture Capital, and Exits 🤑

• Explo BI raises $12M Series A 💸
  
  Explo helps companies build customized and embeddable dashboards.

TechCrunch @TechCrunch

Explo BI dashboarding service gains traction with $12M Series A tcrn.ch/3A1QZNQ by @ron_miller

tcrn.chExplo nabs $12M Series A, BI dashboard service gains traction – TechCrunchExplo provides a tool for building customized BI dashboards with a look and feel of your own company, which you can embed in your website or email to customers.

• A Gorgias $30M Series C 😍
  

  With over 10,000+ customers including Steve Madden and Olipop, Gorgias empowers e-commerce businesses to transform customer experience into customer delight.

Gorgias 📨 @gorgiasio

We’re excited to share we have raised a $30 million Series C round led by @transposevc and @Shopify. Read more about how we're going to use this funding round to help merchants generate even more revenue through their customer experience:

bit.lyGorgias’ $30 Million Series C and the Future of Customer Experience for Online StoresGorgias’ Series C funding will support our goal to help ecommerce merchants drive revenue growth by improving customer experience, retention, and conversion rates.

Launches, events, and releases

• Move over slides, Gamma is here! 💥
  

  Fast, interactive, and collaborative, Gamma is redefining how you share and present your work.
  

  #1 Product Of The Day on Product Hunt for all the right reasons! 🤩

Grant Lee @thisisgrantlee

Every year, half a billion people create PowerPoint decks. This past year, we've been working on a completely new approach to presentations and decks in private beta. While we're still super early, we're excited to launch publicly on Product Hunt today! producthunt.com/posts/gamma

• Bid-adieu to lengthy design processes ft. Poly 💅🏻
  

  Generate textures, graphics, icons, sprites, and more in seconds all with a single text prompt: With Poly. 💫
  

  The possibilities? Limited only by your imagination.

Abhay Agarwal @Denizen_Kane

Excited to launch @with_poly today, backed by @ycombinator! Poly lets you generate 4K+ UHD creative assets with just a text prompt. We're starting with textures for 3D modeling, then to illustrations, icons, vector art, and more. Check it out: withpoly.com

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

All definitions aside, Product-led growth optimizes for one north-star business metric—

Customer Acquisition Cost. 💴

Mickey Alon, CTO and Founder of Gainsight PX, and ex-GVP Engineering at Marketo tears down everything it means to put your product in the driver’s seat of your growth engine.

A great masterclass on everything PLG🚀 Thank us later 💁🏻‍♀️

Blazing Hot Meme Zone ⚡️

Productivity 101 👩🏻‍💻

Community Watch 👀

ICYMI: It's been a week since our first community mixer. We asked attendees of "Bottoms Up" to invest in 5 PLG companies of their choosing. The results may not surprise you (or maybe they will)

Toplyne @Toplynehq

How it started vs. How it ended A few BottomsUp crowd favorites were: 🎨@figma 💻@webflow 🧑‍💻@getpostman 🖊️@clickup #BottomsUp #Bangalore #plg

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