Recap

• We all know about the Casual Contact growth loop. Reminder, this is when the company brands its “logo” on various properties when a user is on a free plan which helps acquire new users (think “made with [blank]). Superhuman takes a different approach to this growth tactic by incentivizing both parties.

• Superhuman turns its branding into a referral affiliate link.

• The growth loop:

  1. The customer sends an email with Superhuman in the footer

  2. Prospect sees an email with Superhamn logo branding

  3. Prospect uses the link to sign up for a Superhuman account

  4. New Customer is acquired

• Offering a free month for the customer and the new user is a lubricant in this growth engine. Lubricants are designed to accelerate growth loops by removing friction.

Recap

• Cameron shares his take on the 10 most important lessons and tactics when scaling PLG, using Atlassian has the Starchild! Reminder - this is $3 billion in revenue with $10k employees - that’s $300k/employee!

• My favorite lessons in his playbook:

  1. Apply force for greater expansion - PLG is all about expansion and retention ARR vs net new logos. When you can generate self-serve monetization to expand the existing user base, you put less pressure on sales-led growth on ARR

  2. Avoid the Enterprise trap - this is a continued battle within B2B saas companies. Enterprise logos look attractive in the short term, but it’s at a great cost: long-term sustainability and scalability.

Recap

• Massimo shares 4 hard things about PLS

• But the juiciest information is in his 33-slide deck on the Psychology of “free” vs “free trial” a 60% increase in B2B signups! Check it out here!

• My favorite quote: “IF the product is the main driver of growth, THEN you must shorten the distance to firsthand experience of product value”

Recap

• Let’s f*cking go! I love seeing growth marketing folks shine in the face of PLG. This specific story that Kyle so beautifully captured is so needed in the Growth Marketing (Acquisition) community.

• Time and time again, I’ve struggled to capture the essence and patience needed to scale marketing-led acquisition in cross-functional teams because, in my experience, it’s not well understood.

• Here comes Bruno, from Webflow, to give us a rundown on how he’s contributed to a $100M ARR

• It’s table stakes that you must scale SEO and Paid marketing activities. However, it’s the how.

• Horizontal or programmatic SEO is fundamental to Product-led Marketing (PLM) and Webflow has done this with Templates. (more on PLM here)

• Creating a qualified signup metric based on signup questions and enrichment data is the key to fast learnings and data feedback loops. This ensures faster time to learning which leads to a faster CAC payback. This cannot be done in a marketing silo. Product and Data must be team players here.

Recap

• Web Bush (from https://productled.com/) has contributed more than most to the PLG community helping empower CEOs and future students of growth.

• He’s back with a fantastic tidbit on PLG common mistakes:

  1. PLG is not tied to vision or strategy - it’s HOW you do business

  2. Your entire company doesn’t understand ICP

  3. You obsess over the model instead of the features

• My take, I’ve personally experienced #2 in my role as a growth operator and I have to say, this has been the most challenging to prove across the entire company because of the multiple GTM motions within PLG aka bottoms-up, top-down, self-serve, sales-assist, etc. Each motion prioritizes a different user within the journey, but depending on where the user is in the journey, it complicates how you work together to acquire and retain those users.