Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

Good book on PLG useful for any product team that wants to learn the key principles of product-led companies and spark some thinking on how to adapt.The second half of the book is dense with examples and templates of email communications to support various parts of the funnel. It's useful reference, but I wonder if these templates could be provided in other ways (downloadable?). Some people may appreciate having everything in one place however.

The “value metric” and “bowling alley” concepts and tips are extremely helpful. Highly recommended for anyone who’s trying to help users succeed with a SaaS product with as little friction as possible.These sections alone make the book worthwhile.However, there are several topics that are addressed in an incoherent and contradictory manner. Chapter 2 addresses the decision between free trial, premium, and demo sales models. I found the information in this chapter helpful, but the rest of the book assumes a free trial approach and doesn’t really address the others. Demo is the best fit for my situation, but the book doesn’t say much about how to succeed with the demo model.The concept of a value metric is also very helpful. However, the author implies that pricing should be based on this value metric, with no discussion of when it makes sense to meter pricing based on this metric and when it doesn’t. I would assume most users would like to do an unlimited amount of whatever activity they are paying for, eg tasks in a task app, videos watched on Netflix, etc.At several points, it would’ve been better for the author to say “here’s what I think everyone should do, and all my advice that follows assumes that you’re going along with my recommendation.” The book would’ve made more sense if the author had just said bluntly that he recommends a free trial model.

Great book. Must read. I have 22 yrs in business. This book is a view of contemporary business.

Who's the most likely candidate to pay for your product? Someone who's already using it. That's the driver behind Product Led Growth (PLG) strategies. The idea is that instead of (or in addition to) filling your sales pipe with leads pulled in from traditional in-bound and out-bound sales and marketing efforts and then progressively qualifying them as they work through your funnel, you use your product to qualify leads to a much higher level. Users already getting value from your product make the best leads.PLG isn't without its risks though. What if your free offering doesn't provide enough value users don't get it? What if it provides so much value they don't need to pay to for the additional seats or features? This books helps a product manager like myself think through the different kinds of PLG approaches, understanding the risks and benefits of each approach. I enjoyed the book so much I shared it with the rest of our management team. It's spurred some great discussions and helped us all get on the same page about our approach. Highly recommended for any Software as a Service company that feels like they're hitting the limits of the traditional sales model (or need a leaner approach to bootstrapping their start-up phase).

The content is great for a single product company that is trying to position the product offering. Some good tips and advice on free trial and fremium models. There are some good takeaways in all aspects of product lifecycle management. However, working in enterprise software company that offers it as a sass product none of the recommended approaches would make sense. I wish the author also focused on products that are B2B and require a top-down sales strategy.

If you are thinking about making the jump from sales-led to product-led growth, this book is your first step. It’s an easy read and full of useful frameworks and tips for getting started. There are also good examples weaved in, applicable to both B2C and B2B audiences.I’m generally not a fan of business books, but as an experienced product leader, I could instantly relate to the growth challenges raised by the author, and I found myself immediately thinking about how to put his recommendations into action.I’m recommending it for my CEO and the rest of our leadership team.

The book is quite good and very timely - I'd give it 5 stars but the Kindle formatting is really hard to read. A screenshot is shared here for a small sample.

You might be in the early stages of designing a digital product, debating pricing pre-launch, or further down the track and wondering what to do next in your marketing strategy. Are you far enough along that you're worried about churn?Wes pulls together product design, marketing and a broad swath of customer-related topics. There are diagrams and umpteen relatable real examples which made me stop, think, and add notes on our product design.Do you know if your product has "ability debt"?It's not a book to read right through in one sitting, or, if you do, you're then going to come back and bookmark and re-read and think about the implications.I'm currently a solo startup founder and Wes's advice has helped me fine-tune our freemium model. I've also worked for one of the biggest CAD companies in the world and other international product companies. The highest praise I can give is to say I deeply wish we'd had this book back then to clarify a lot of fuzzy arguments.PS don't read whilst hungry, there are enough great food analogies you might find yourself rushing out for a hamburger!