Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…And I want to reinforce some different themes before I get into some layers of the stack because I think it's important to frame the benefits of the modern growth stack. So one is data, two is workflow, and three is impact. So starting with data, the modern growth stack companies really are powered by these smart integrations and the automation that you get as a result. So with this proliferation of SaaS, it's created this need for more data access and interoperability. We've all felt that pain of siloed data. Modern growth stack companies leverage reverse ETL companies, like Hightouch or Census, to break down these silos and help companies, or employees across the company, access data and be more productive. So that's a big data theme with modern growth stack companies. The other theme that they unlock is around workflow. Here, it's really the enablement of people and process. So rather than employees sitting in their departmental silos, modern growth stack companies build bridges between them. So by unlocking data access, the business side can often self-serve and be more self-sufficient without relying on an engineer or a data scientist to run queries or stitch together data sets for them. The other thing here is lots of growth work is inherently cross functional. So the efforts to drive growth requires new tools and collaborative workflows like we're discussing. Without purpose-built software, many teams like mine felt no choice but to build in-house. So we spent sacred hours building and maintaining tooling for experimentation, personalization, billing, monetization. These were resources that could have been reallocated to building proprietary features for the business had we been able to buy something purpose-built. And finally, these products really drive impact. So the idea here is driving hard ROI in the form of cost reduction. So automation means time savings, and oftentimes, that can be mapped directly to cost reduction for a company. But they also help product and growth and go to market teams better engage and monetize customers. So they're driving hard ROI in the form of revenue impact too. I'm really compelled by companies that can drive hard ROI both across cost saving and revenue generation. And I think that ROI story is even more compelling now in a softer macroeconomic climate. You just have to be able to continue to retain sales and pricing power, and I think that's derived from a strong ROI story like I described. So those are general themes and consistencies across the companies that I get particularly excited about. So happy to talk about a few layers in the stack, and I think you might be familiar with a few of these as well, especially based on your growth background at Airbnb and tools that you probably build yourself. Yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to say, that so many of these things are just coming out of startups that have built these in-house. And then they're just like, "Hey, I could start a company doing this and provide it to all these other companies." And so I just love that there's all these tools coming out that just make it easier to build startups and grow startups, and do less work, and have less people. Just reminds me of the number one app in the App Store at this point. I don't know if it still is Gas, which is just like four people, and it's higher than TikTok and YouTube, and all the things, and Facebook, and it's four people. And so it just shows you the power of what tools can do for you to build new startups and disrupt people, and companies that have been around for a long time. And you have to help companies do more with less now. There's a lot of frozen budgets and that's a good way to break through. So I love that these companies can do that for the buyer. So one that's come up a bit and gotten a lot of airtime recently is product-led sales. This idea of companies that serve PLG businesses and harness the power of all that product usage data to inform the customer facing team around which accounts are most upgradable. It's really free money when you shine a light on an account that nobody was paying attention to and some inside sales team can drive a large account expansion. So I don't know what better ROI you should get than that. And there's a bunch of companies that are doing this. Endgame happens to be one that I work with. They have customers like Figma, Loom, Calendly. There's other players too. I think Pocus has done a phenomenal job of building content and community to help inform the market around the power of product led sales. So there's just a lot of goodness about all the players in this space really waking everyone up to this opportunity of layering on sales to a product led motion and how to maximize revenue along the way.…

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