In this episode of ThriveCast, we speak with Sanjay Sarathy, VP of Self-Serve and Developer Experience at Cloudinary. Sanjay shares Cloudinary’s journey from a developer consulting firm to one of the most successful product-led growth stories in SaaS—scaling past $100M ARR while maintaining a strong self-serve engine and developer trust

Key Insights

* Cloudinary started as a consulting company before productizing a repeated developer pain

* Developers were treated as the core growth channel, not just users

* Early investment in developer support and documentation drove trust and word of mouth

* Self-serve and enterprise were built as a continuum, not competing motions

* Freemium created value first, revenue followed naturally

* Word of mouth still drives a significant share of daily signups at scale

* Simplifying signup and activation had outsized impact on growth

* Not all product launches succeed, fast failure led to better product strategy

Actionable Takeaways

* Treat your primary user persona as a growth engine, not a funnel step

* Invest early in support, docs, and activation, not just sales

* Let self-serve usage reveal future enterprise opportunities

* Reduce friction relentlessly small changes compound at scale

* Separate product experimentation from core revenue products

* Build trust first; monetization follows naturally

Resources Mentioned

* Cloudinary self-serve and freemium model

* Developer documentation and SDK-first onboarding

* Activation and signup flow experiments

* Product incubation model for new bets

If you’re a B2B SaaS founder, PLG leader, or developer-focused product team, this episode shows that sustainable growth doesn’t come from aggressive selling it comes from earning trust, removing friction, and letting value scale naturally across self-serve and enterprise journeys.

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