Lauryn Isford: preference

Transcript context

…Great advice. I want to shift to a different topic and this will be much shorter. You have this really cool framework for thinking about the PLG funnel, product-led growth, and interestingly kind of trickles down to the team you build, metrics you choose, and things like that. So, can you just briefly talk about just this framework that you use to think about PLG growth in the PLG funnel? When I think about how to grow with PLG in a business that has some element of PLG, self-server, freemium, I usually start with a funnel that roughly maps to the same scaffolding, regardless of business. Whether I've worked on the business, whether I'm supporting the business as an advisor, I love starting with this framework. The first step is join, the second is evaluate, the third is upgrade, and the fourth is expand. This funnel represents the journey of a customer in a PLG product as they advance and develop in their lifetime of using the product. It starts with becoming a part of the account that's using the product or signing up, and you might join because you found Airtable on Twitter or you might join because Lenny invited you to use Airtable. So, there are different ways that you can join that product in the first place. Then importantly, you evaluate if it's right for you, and that word choice of evaluate is deliberately not onboard or activate because it's about what the user needs to see that they are going to get the value that they want in using your product and in building a habit around it. Next is upgrade. Ideally, someone has gone from beginner to intermediate or even advanced in their ongoing education and in getting to know your product over some amount of time and they see premium value and raise their hand and say, "I will convert to it." Now if you offer self-serve premium plans, that's awesome. They can do it with a credit card right in the product. Sometimes this means raising their hand to talk to sales and that's great too, but they upgrade to some sort of premium experience or to more value than what they have when they got started. And finally expand, and vertical says this can be nuanced but with more horizontal tools. Ideally, a few folks, maybe one, maybe a few are using a tool in an organization and then many more adopt it over time, and that expansion drives net dollar retention, it drives brand awareness, it drives more usage in more pockets of the company, it is awesome for renewal rates if you're working with enterprise contracts, and ultimately then also brings new referrals into the product that loop all the way back to the beginning at join. I love it. And what's cool is upgrade and expansion kind of bake in retention. You're not going to upgrade, you're not going to expand if you're not retained. Can you talk a little bit about how you use this framework? Do you bucket? Do you have these four teams on your growth team that focus on each of these stages? Is it more of a conceptual framework? Do you come up with KPIs for each of these steps? How do you actually operationalize this concept?…

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