Waitlists have a shelf life, why doesn't Java collect itself? Water, water everywhere, 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 ❤️

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Into the Twitterverse 🐦🌌

• Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink 💧

  There are only two kinds of SaaS companies

  • Those who are product-led ⭐️

  • Those who want to be 🤩

  And the demand from the latter for PLG talent who works at the former is at an all-time high!

  Just ask friends at Figma, Calendly, Loom, Gitlab, and Asana how many offers they have from other PLG companies?… I rest my case 😉

  Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin #ДобісаПутіна @jasonlk

  "In a few years, perhaps there will be a ton of VP of Product-Led Growth hires. But not today." There Really Aren’t Enough PLG Magicians Out There to Hire. Not Yet.

  

  saastr.comThere Really Aren’t Enough PLG Magicians Out There to Hire. Not Yet. | SaaStrI’ve recently had several different conversations with founders looking to hire “PLG experts”. One wanted to hire “Mr/Ms PLG” to make their product more

• Checks out ✅

Replit ⠕ @Replit

If Java is so good at garbage collection, why doesn't it collect itself?

• Waitlists have a shelf life 🥩

  A tremendous conversation about SaaS waitlists and how conversion rates vary across companies and across lead shelf life. Some insightful replies below:

  With @linear we probably saw 30-50% in the first months and then 10% 12mo later. We also invited the most interested users first (based what they said in the waitlist survey)

  ca. 2015 Dropbox Paper, <5% — we waited 3-6 months to pull folks off the list so activation was low

  I don’t remember the exact numbers at Everlane but generally longer waits ==> lower conversion Something that helped was an extremely aggressive onboarding movie on clickthrough.

Lenny Rachitsky 🇺🇦🇺🇸 | lennysan.eth @lennysan

If your product had (or has) a waitlist, what kind of conversion do you see from waitlist -> eventual signup?

• Hiring is tough 😞

  We hate plugging ourselves, but this one hits close to home. A thread we wrote on what’s worked and what hasn’t for us at Toplyne when it comes to hiring in this craaaazzzyyy market 🤪

  We’d love your thoughts and suggestions on how we (and other young companies) could do better in hiring and attracting the best talent out there!

  Rohit ツ @rrkhanna

  Given the crazy job market here is what @Toplynehq does to engage candidates post offer to reduce drop offs from offer signing. Here is whats worked and what hasn't 🧵

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🔎 The PLG hunt

• Interpret customer feedback with Enterpret 💬

  Enterpret layers analytics into customer feedback so product teams can quantify and glean insights directly from raw text, while cutting dependencies on other teams.

  Enterpret’s customer analytics platform helps product teams prioritize even as they scale.

  TechCrunch @TechCrunch

  Enterpret launches with $4.4M, NLP technology to decipher customer feedback tcrn.ch/3IAAtaP by @ChristineMHall

  

  tcrn.chEnterpret launches with $4.3M, NLP technology to decipher customer feedback – TechCrunchEnterpret is building and deploying customer-specific models, based on customer feedback, for product development teams.

  They just announced their seed round of $4.3 Million led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Sequoia Capital India and Unusual Ventures. 🤩

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

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Growth Stories 🚀

Meet the “Analytics Engineer” 👷‍♀️

Data professionals compare analytics engineers to librarians - people who curate an organization’s data and act as a steward of all organizational knowledge, rather than a researcher who answers a specific question. Discover the growth story of the pioneers of "analytics engineering" who raised $222M this week at a $4.2B+ valuation. 

Analytics engineering with dbt Labs

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Fundraising, Venture Capital and Exits 🤑

• The next layer in the modern data stack 📚

  dbt Labs raised $222M in Series D funding this week at a $4.2B valuation. Existing investor Altimeter led the new round, with participation from Databricks, GV, Salesforce Ventures, and Snowflake.

  dbt Labs @dbt_labs

  weird day to be announcing big news, but here we are... $222m series D, $4.2b valuation Round led by our existing investor Altimeter with participation from Databricks and Snowflake

  

  blog.getdbt.comThe next layer of the modern data stackdbt Labs raised another round of funding– $222m at $4.2b valuation. Existing investor Altimeter led the round, with participation from Databricks, GV, Salesforce Ventures, and Snowflake. The raise will fuel our investment in building the next layer in the modern data stack.

• Snowflake acquires Streamlit for $800M 🤝

  Streamlit is a startup that developed a popular open source project for building data-based apps.

  Snowflake @SnowflakeDB

  We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement to acquire Streamlit. Together, we’ll empower developers and data scientists to mobilize the world’s data snowflake.com/blog/snowflake…

  

Launches, events, and releases

• Mark your calendars. National No Code Day is on March 11.

  Zapier is launching the first edition of No-Code day and Contest to celebrate the people and the technology that power the no-code movement.

  Wade Foster @wadefoster

  Fun news from @zapier today! 1. We’re launching the first ever #NationalNoCodeDay on March 11. 2. We’re launching Zapier’s No-Code contest, giving y’all a chance to win a $25k cash prize from Zapier. Learn more below!

  

  zapier.comCelebrate National No-Code Day with ZapierCelebrate National No-Code Day, and enter Zapier’s No-Code Contest for a chance to win $25,000.

Nerding out on PLG 🤓📚

Case studies in how to do SEO: Lessons from Canva, Adobe, Zapier, Glassdoor, Walmart, and more 👇

Hrishikesh Pardeshi @hrishiptweets

Canva, Adobe, Zapier have all mastered SEO & scaled to millions of monthly visitors! I created 7 such case studies so you can implement the learnings to grow your startup with SEO 🚀 Includes our own case study of scaling to 1M+/mo :) A masterclass in SEO 🧵`

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