The undefeated, undisputed GOAT of SEO! Any publicity is good publicity, PLG companies don't do sal-..., and 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 🐦🌌

• The undefeated, undisputed GOAT of SEO! 🥁

  This mega-thread by @_buildd was an insightful peek under the hood of the Canva SEO machine. TL;DR? 👇🏻

  • Intent first! 🖱 Search intent is very important in SEO. Before targeting a keyword, make sure to check the intent.

  • Internal links 🔗 Organize your sites so all pages are internally linked. This will help even the most niche pages to rank.

  • Scale 📈 Create scalable templates to add new pages.

  buildd @_buildd

  No startup does SEO like Canva! They get 73M monthly traffic & have 13M backlinks 🤯 Learn everything about Canva’s kickass marketing 🧵

• Any publicity is good publicity? 🤭

  How good? Well… amidst all the Calendly drama, the company saw its largest spike in new signups last week.

  Tope Awotona @TopeAwotona

  I'd like to personally thank the @Calendly customer community for the ❤️ re: the value we provide you, and @lessin for a huge spike in signups and for all his portfolio cos that rely on Calendly to win and delight customers. We appreciate the support 🙏

• PLG companies don’t sell!

  There are plenty of folks in the PLG community who hold the belief that “Product should do all the selling”… not only is that sooo 2020 🙄 it’s also super dangerous advice to give founders.

  Every single large PLG company sells…Calendly, Figma, Shopify, Notion, you name it. And as of Feb 28th, 2022… Zapier!

  Wade Foster @wadefoster

  Well folks! It's finally time. We've been testing sales at Zapier for customers and getting good results. If you want to be an early part of this team at Zapier we've got a few roles we're hiring for: zapier.com/jobs/586037000… zapier.com/jobs/586203600…

  

  zapier.comSales-Assist Representative II - Join Zapier. From anywhere.We’re on a mission to Make Automation Work for Everyone. And we’re hiring!.

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🔎 The PLG hunt

• A PLG tool for PLG companies? Meet Stonly.

  Stonly is a tool that helps self-serve companies explain how their product works to customers by sharing detailed knowledge bases, onboarding guides, and more. The tool attempts to break down the barriers between product guidance and customer support by allowing highly contextual in-app guides and walkthroughs. The French company grew 5x in 2021 and last week raised their Series A investment of $22M led by European VC Northzone.

  TechCrunch @TechCrunch

  Stonly, a customer onboarding platform, raises $22M series A led Northzone and Accel tcrn.ch/3IBGjYU by @mikebutcher

  

  tcrn.chStonly, a customer onboarding platform, raises $22M series A led by Northzone and Accel – TechCrunchIn the age of COVID — or rather, the age of massive digitization of services, post-COVID — online customers want to onboard themselves to products and platforms. After all, isn’t it faster? And isn’t it cheaper for the platforms themselves? Playing in this space are companies like Scree…

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

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Growth Stories 🚀

He got that Supabass (boom, badoom, boom) 🎶

This week we dive deep into Supabase: the postgres-based opensource alternative to Google's Firebase that has Nicki Minaj to thank for their name.

Read more here👇

How Supabase is taking on the Goliath of Backend-as-a-Service

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Fundraising, Venture Capital, Acquisitions, and Exits 🤑

• Canva’s been making moves this week. Just yesterday, they announced the acquisition of the data visualization platform - “Flourish.”

  Melanie Perkins @MelanieCanva

  We're incredibly excited to welcome Flourish to the Canva family! Data storytelling is an increasingly critical part of visual communication, and we're looking forward to combining their innovative technology with the magic of Canva! ✨ canva.com/newsroom/news/…

• Productboard’s total funding soared to $262 million, at a valuation of $1.725B - this is the first time they’re announcing their valuation publicly.

  Productboard @productboard

  We’re so excited to announce our $125M Series D! The investment will be used to further build out our platform and make #prodmgmt more accessible to everyone 🚀 Learn more about our vision here 👇 productboard.com/blog/series-d-…

  

  productboard.comProductboard has raised a $125M Series DToday Productboard announced a $125M Series D funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global…

• Support teams at Atlassian are getting an AI boost - the PLG giant acquired AI-powered virtual agent tech provider Percept.AI this week.

  Atlassian @Atlassian

  We’re excited to announce that Percept.AI is joining the Atlassian family! Read to learn more about how Percept.AI is a key part of our continuing investment in #ITSM.

  

  atlassian.comPercept.AI, maker of AI-powered virtual agent technology, joins the Atlassian family - Work Life by AtlassianPercept.AI and Jira Service Management will help enterprises deliver exceptional employee and customer support.

• Welcome to the SQL lakehouse world. Dremio’s valuation doubled to $2B within a year. 💸

  Dremio @dremio

  🔥 🔥 Dremio Doubles its valuation to 2 billion within a year🔥 🔥 #2billionstronger We want to thank our customers, partners, and employees for helping us reach this milestone. We could not have done this without your support and belief. lnkd.in/gycNwUWG

  

• Subscription management and recurring billing platform Chargebee is now valued at $3.5B 🚀

  Chargebee @chargebee

  Thrilled to announce that @chargebee has raised $250M at a $3.5B valuation.🚀 We are grateful to our investors, customers, partners & team who have supported our vision to empower growth for subscription businesses. Thank you all! 🧡 Learn more: venturebeat.com/2022/02/01/sub… #Funding

  

Launches, events, and releases

• Coda dropped a whole set of doc customization features this week 🧵

  Coda @coda_hq

  🚨 Today we have a sweet suite of four Coda updates to share with you! Read on: 🧵👇

• Data viz, but make it pretty 😍

  Along with the acquisition of the data visualization platform “Flourish”, Canva announced another related update this week: Tables.

  Canva @canva

  We’ve kept this under the table for a while, but it’s time we let it out... Tables are now live in Canva! Simply search “Table” in the Elements tab to enhance the data visualization of your next design, presentation, or report. 🙌

• Descript social video features are now live! Now you can transcribe & clip, customize and share engaging clips in seconds 📹

  Descript @DescriptApp

  At Wednesday's Season 2 event, Descript unveiled new social video features to empower Creators to promote their content in a whole new way ⚡️ But, what is social video? How can it fit into my workflow? Where can I learn more? We're glad you asked 🧵 1/8

  

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Even after hitting $200M ARR, Asana has managed to accelerate and grow faster quarter after quarter.

How do you grow faster even as you scale? Jason Lemkin breaks down Asana’s accelerating growth trajectory. Thread 🧵 👇

Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin @jasonlk

So Asana is the latest SaaS leader to grow even >faster< as it scales At $400m+ ARR, it's growing a stunning 70% And that's up from 55% at $200m+ in ARR 5 Interesting Learnings: 🔽🔽🔽🔽🔽

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