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The "L" in Product Led Growth

The "L" in Product Led Growth

What does "Led" really mean???

Gary Chan
January 28, 2025

We adopted the Product-Led Growth (PLG) initiative as part of our customer acquisition strategy. We could have gone the traditional route of building a large sales team for outbound efforts, but with limited funds, that wasn't scalable. Another option was taking a marketing-led growth approach, focusing on various marketing channels to drive customers through the door and convert them via free trials.

Instead, the company decided on PLG backed by Openview Partners, we decided to let our product do the talking. We chose a product-led growth strategy, making the product our primary driver of growth. In PLG, we focus on improving the product experience itself rather than relying heavily on sales or marketing efforts.

First Self-Service Freemium in Compliance

Implementing PLG in the compliance space wasn't straightforward. Compliance is inherently complex and challenging, especially when competing against well-funded incumbents and competitors with large sales teams. However, our product-led model enabled users to experience compliance firsthand, build trust, and spread the word in startup mastermind groups and SMB communities.

Having the product at the forefront makes it transparent and easy to use. There is no salesperson in the way. And our customers feel reassured.

This strategy created an unexpected virality effect. As we accumulated more SMB customers, we found ourselves getting in front of larger enterprise customers who were considering these smaller vendors. The network effect was powerful and organic.

Product-led unlocked Organic Growth Through Word-of-Mouth

Our belief in PLG's potential to scale acquisition while lowering costs compared to traditional approaches proved correct. After just a year and a half post-launch, 40% of our traffic came from word-of-mouth and virality. The product experience created the magic necessary for organic growth:

Companies discovered us through our power-by branding or through their vendors
Discussions about achieving SOC 2 compliance in various forums like Reddit and Slack communities featured our solution
Major accelerators and incubators like Y Combinator, 500 Startups, TinySeeds, MicroConf, Techstars, and Microsoft Accelerators began talking about us

Leading with Product to Transitioning to Paywalls

PLG isn't just about acquisition—it's also about smart monetization. We create upsell opportunities through strategically placed paywalls and gated advanced features. Our PLG team continuously experiments with pricing and packaging, always communicating changes clearly to our users. The trust we build through delivering immediate value in our freemium or low-cost offerings lowered the barrier to entry and translated into a willingness to upgrade.

When leading with the product first, customers know what they are investing into and what additional compliance needs, whether it's SOC 2 and then HIPAA, or ISO 27001.

Opening with the Product: Superhuman Onboarding

100% our product-led onboarding experience has been crucial to our success. Customers can sign up. Over a 30min call, we give them access to our product. They experience the value because we “led” with the product.

On these onboarding calls, customers learn, and understand their compliance needs through:

Self-served documentation
A line of sight “compliance roadmap”
Automated emails for hand raisers
Targeted lifecycle marketing

These materials reassured our customers and kept us top-of-mind.

They experience the value because we “led” with the product.

A Cross-Functional “Led” Effort

While we're product-led, our success relies on all departments working together. Our Product, engineering, and design teams craft the self-serve experience. Marketing helped us get started with the catalyst on paid-ad flywheel, word-of-mouth virality flywheel and the PLG motion growth flywheel. The sales team was able to go upmarket, and the previously sales-led prospects are now going through the Product-led motion. The customer success and customer support team wrap the accumulative product experience for our customers.

This is what "led" truly means in product-led growth—putting the product experience at the forefront and making it the primary driver of our growth strategy. The results speak for themselves: organic growth, lower acquisition costs, and happy customers who become our best advocates.