Why we're doing live events
There's a reason why Saturday Night Live is... live
Hey-o. 👋🏻 Ruchin here.
We’ve been busy at Top of the Lyne. 70+ tear-downs of product-led growth companies later, we’ve realized that there’s a lot more to scrape in this barrel than we’d initially suspected.
1\ Our growth tear-downs were powered by secondary research.
It was time to upgrade secondary to primary.
2\ We started sitting down with folks leading the PLG companies we write about, in their offices.
Side-note: Did you know that the rooms in the Superhuman offices were named after “super-humans” like Malala Yousafzai, Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela? We didn’t either until we dropped by to interview Superhuman’s Head of Strategy & Analytics.
With primary and secondary research unlocked, it was time to make the natural next big move.
3\ Interviews, but make it live. Along with you, our audience.
We’re piloting the fully live version of our growth story research this Tuesday. The hope is to fully outnumber our guest, so we flood them with questions, and squeeze out as much as we can from the interview.
We’re starting this with three PLG companies we’ve written about before: ClickUp, Figma, and Appcues.
Why ClickUp?
ClickUp because… honestly, because these numbers are RIDICULOUS. Since raising $100M in series B funding late in 2020:
ClickUp grew 4x from 200,000 teams to 800,000
Revenue tripled 3x to over $85M
Headcount increased almost 7x
All in one year. What changed in that time frame? ClickUp introduced a Sales motion on top of their purring bottom-up engine.
It was either that, or 600,000 teams started caring about productivity overnight.
Imagine being the first Sales leader at ClickUp in 2021. Tasked with the job of docking an enterprise sales motion onto a PLG rocketship moving at $20M in revenue a year.
If you’re thinking “How the hell did he do that?” - you can now ask him yourself on Tuesday 10 AM PDT.
Why Figma?
Simple answer: Figma is the PLG GOAT.
The best tools fundamentally rethink a way of work. Figma did this for design, and suddenly opened the design process to PMs, Heads of Product, and the CEO. And then to product marketers, marketers, and larger parts of the org.
The best sales teams sell scientifically. Figma’s reach is global. And their bottom-up engine is a a twin-turbocharged, three-cylinder, 2.0-liter camless.
Nitro-boosted by a community that has a global footprint and an Account Management team that owns expansion targets.
The next step in Figma’s growth is porting this product-led sales engine globally into new geographies.
Up next on Figma’s horizon is APAC. And tasked with this project is Scott Pugh, who was previously Regional Vice President & GM APAC at Mixpanel. We’re sitting down with Scott on March 28.
Got questions for how Figma scales new geographies? Drop them here while you register:
Why Appcues?
Because onboarding isn’t just a tiny idiosyncrasy of your product. For a lot of your sign-ups, it is 100% of what they know about your product.
In a world where your product is competing for your user’s attention with a million other potential sources of quick dopamine (the good stuff), getting the first impression right sets ALL the context for the rest of the user journey.
Appcues is the experience layer that sits on top of your product - handholding your users through the journey - starting with onboarding, all the way through adoption, adoration, and advocacy.
There’s so much here to unpack - more than enough to write a whole book about it.
So we got the guy who did.
On April 4, we ask Ramli John for his hot-take on product friction. And more.
Want Ramli to tear down your product’s onboarding? Tell us when you register, and we’ll do this during the sesh.
If you’re not a clicker of links, drop your question here in replies, and we’ll take them live during these events.
We’ll see you on Tuesday. 🫡