ProductLed Podcast

Krish Subramanian, CEO, and Co-founder of the leading subscription and billing software called Chargebee, will be sitting in today’s show to answer that question. Chargebee is a global subscription management platform that automates revenue operations of over 4,500 high-growth subscription-based businesses from startups to enterprises across verticals, including SaaS, eCommerce, e-learning, IoT, Publications, and more. Krish and his extremely dynamic mind will be sharing first-hand experiences on how they evolve their go-to-marketing strategy over the years and learn how to straddle sales-led and product-led motions together to drive fast growth. He also talks about the trials and setbacks that they’ve encountered and how they move past those obstacles to generate wins.

Shownotes

[0:59] Krish talks about their journey of reflecting on their mistakes and wins at Chargebee

[1:56] What got them into solving this problem of helping subscription companies understand their business much better?

[7:11] The relevance of understanding your subset of customers 

[8:42] How do they identify their best customers?

[10:36] Getting that value metric and Northstar metric is the biggest revelation for them

[15:33] On building more features for your most successful customers

[{21:21 Why does he think the pricing is so important to be Product-Led as a business?

[25:03] Your end user’s success will eventually become your success 

[30:00] Advantages of having both self-service and pre-sales

[31:15] How did Chargebee evolve the way they structure their teams?

About Krish Subramanian:

Krish Subramanian is the co-founder and CEO of Chargebee, a global leader in subscription billing and revenue management solution for scaling businesses. He is an engineer by profession and a problem solver at heart with over 20 years of experience in the software field. As an ex-consultant, Krish strongly believes that business value is defined by service and experience to the customers and the people. He is referred to as the “nice guy” within the company, the tech community, the media, and his mom. 

Profile

Chargebee

Krish on LinkedIn

Krish on Twitter

Mariam Hakobyan is the Co-Founder and CEO at Softr. She’s an engineer turned entrepreneur and has a pang for technology, product, and design. At Softr, she pioneers in building the right product, listening to customers, and building ecosystems for software enthusiasts. She prioritizes the customer’s needs by simplifying software building so anyone can set up businesses without being intimidated by their tech skills.

Today, let’s listen to Mariam as she tells how Softr went from zero to 45,000 users in just a year. 

Show Notes

[0:57] What initially drove her to start Software.io? 

[1:56] How did she start exploring different ideas for the platform?

[6:01] What did she do to get the product into people’s hands?

[9:20] On pursuing user growth and monetizing your product

[12:20] The passionate software community, the product’s simplicity, and virality got them from zero to 45,000 users 

[18:33] Mariam talks about empowering the community, creating ecosystems and a place for people to thrive

[21:53] The importance of being mindful of anything that you add to the platform 

[29:04] Understanding what customers value and how much they want to customize?

[29:59] Intuition and understanding of the customers on what types of things are they trying to build 

[38:55] Build a great product where people feel like a magician

About Mariam Hakobyan

Mariam is a graduate of Yerevan State University. Her colleagues highly respect her as she is passionate about her job and is always one step ahead in providing service to others. She started her engineering career in her early 20s and is now a force to be reckoned with in her field. But most importantly, Mariam is now a loving mother of two. 

Links

Softr.io 

Airtable

Profile

Mariam on LinkedIn

Tom Ronen is the head of customer success at monday.com. Monday.com is a global software company founded in 2014. Its product is a simple and super customizable Work Operating System (Work OS), a tool that powers teams to run projects and workflows with confidence. In this episode, Tom will talk about how product and customer success collaborate on monday.com.

Show Notes

[01:56] What monday.com is and its customers

[03:05] The importance of customer success and product teams to work closely together for him

[06:14] On finding the north star for both teams and KPIs to prioritize

[08:00] Who are the ‘active customers’ for monday.com

[10:13] Propagating the culture of transparency in all teams at monday.com

[12:31] Strategies to encourage collaboration from the teams at monday.com

[14:28] The evident effects of the system of doing things at monday.com

[18:00] His advice for product-led leaders and growth people on setting priorities

[20:25] His advice for customer success people in product-led organizations on getting their voices heard

[22:08] How to connect with Tom

About Tom Ronen

Tom Ronen is an experienced Customer Team Lead working for various companies in the software industry. He possesses the following skills in sales, public speaking, management in a fast-paced startup environment. Aside fromHe was previously connected with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as a Commanding Officer - Combat Patrol Ship Unit for three years and two months. 

Profile

• monday.com
• Tom Ronen on LinkedIn

In this podcast, Wes Bush dives into the essential strategies for building a product-led business. Drawing from his experience of working with 408+ SaaS companies, Wes outlines the pitfalls of what he calls "surface-level PLG" and introduces a comprehensive approach that involves nine core components— the ProductLed System. When you implement the system into your business, you'll grow faster with less effort. Tune in to learn how.

Key Highlights:

01:30: Introduction to the importance of standing out in a commoditized market.

3:08: The shift from sales-led to product-led growth.

5:14: Common mistakes in product-led growth.

10:02: Key outcomes of successful product-led businesses.

17:24: Scaling up with the ProductLed System.

33:07: Final thoughts and next steps for building a product-led organization.

Esben Friis-Jensen is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow, the fastest way for user onboarding for modern SaaS businesses. He is also the Co-Founder and Adviser at Cobalt, a modern application security platform enabling businesses to run on-demand Penetration Testing and vulnerability assessments - Pentest as a Service. The goal of this episode is to accelerate learning while transitioning from sales-led to product-led. Esben will talk about the whole transition: What other leaders are doing in this transition and what mistakes they make to avoid doing it again. 

Show Notes

[01:09] A brief background about Esben

[03:38] His thoughts when they started the product-led movement

[07:11] Reasons why they started out as more sales-led

[11:15] The challenges they experienced along the way

[15:40] How they fostered organizational change 

[18:55] The process they went through to get the rest of the team onboard

[23:32] How they got buy-in from the teams in the process of transitioning

[28:49] First quick wins they had in testing the unknowns

[34:50] More advice on iteration from Esben

[37:42] The next thing for him at Userflow

[39:47] Where to find Esben

About Esben Friis-Jensen

Esben Friis-Jensen is originally from Denmark but has lived in the United States for the last eight years. Aside from Userflow and Cobalt, he has also worked as a consultant in the SAP division of Accenture, responsible for managing the test and deployment of global large-scale SAP implementations. 

Link

Product-Led Slack

Profiles

Userflow

Cobalt

LinkedIn

Kevin Tate was former Chief Revenue Officer at Clearbit. His expertise lies in strategic marketing, specifically in eCommerce, enterprise SaaS, social media, digital marketing and the like. He has over 24 years of experience in the field and has led several go-to-market software professional services and hardware-enabled SaaS companies.

In this talk, he explains how Clearbit boosted their product-led to a 5x pipeline as well as how the company creates a seamless experience for their corresponding prospects. There's a lot to dig into this episode. Tune in to find out.

Show Notes

[0:36] What brought Kevin to Clearbit?

[1:56] Some of the big steps that he took in order to get to where he’s at

[4:12] Kevin talks about MEL’s (marketing engages leads).

[8:24] Creating the weekly visitor report 

[11:06] What type of problem space do they want to help companies explore with these tools?

[18:41] What metric do they use to reach out to people?

[28:56]. How to further accelerate your pipeline growth?

[31:19] Try to make your tools as accessible, available, and convenient as possible.

[32:07] How can you identify the best person for your ICP and prioritize your best accounts better? 

[34:07] The importance of having a portable segmentation approach

[36:28] Kevin’s recommendations in nailing the company’s segmentation process

About Kevin

Kevin Tate is a charismatic leader who likes to work swiftly to adhere to the vision, mission, and goals of his company. With over 24 years of experience, Kevin is well-seasoned to help people fully succeed when they deep dive into the market. He is currently the Chief Revenue Officer of Clearbit, an investor, mentor, and business tycoon at heart.

Links

Clearbit

Profile

Kevin’s LinkedIn

Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone, is with us today. She enjoys serving consumers with the best customer experience by creating products that suit their needs. OpenPhone is an app built for teams and individuals so they can level up and use their phones for business anywhere. It’s everything that you and your team need in a phone system! Daryna gives us an overview of how they were able to come up with this unique vision and how they skyrocketed from 0 to 1000 customers.

Are you on the lookout for a business phone? If so, then catch her on the show and stay tuned for more.

Show Notes

[4:47] They want to be a part of an environment that is a lot more inspiring and that allows them to make progress.

[5:50] The reason why they joined Velocity

[6:47] Why did they initially give their product for free?

[9:42] People should be getting value out of the product, so see if that’s true

[12:54] They always knew that OpenPhone would ultimately end up being a product that starts with one person in the company and then scales to the whole team

[19:26] One of the most fundamental lessons learned was that a lot of times you overcomplicate things unnecessarily.

[23:17] Daryna shares some of the biggest milestones that they have achieved throughout the years

[27:08] How were they able to build a team and what did that journey look like?

[34:27] Biggest leadership mistakes and lessons learned from the presence of scale

[35:57 Daryna’s advice on delegation, building a business, and scaling it up

About Daryna Kulya

Daryna Kulya is the COO and co-founder of OpenPhone. She was previously a product manager at Vidyard, where she helped to establish and grow Vidyard GoVideo (ViewedIt). She also worked at Deloitte's Digital Innovation Lab, and helped them with their prototypes and innovations.

Back in 2014, she established Product Hunt Toronto, one of the city's largest product events and the world's first Product Hunt community-run meeting. But what’s more interesting is Daryna is adventurous. She loves hiking trails in her free time.

Link

OpenPhone

Profile

Daryna’s LinkedIn

Justin Bauer is known for his expertise in product analytics. He is always one step ahead in helping companies build better products by amplifying their growth. His primary role as an SVP in Amplitude involves creating teams that establish a deep customer understanding and generate inspired visions to produce unique product experiences that users can enjoy. He’s on the show today to share his insights in building excellent product analytics so you can increase engagement, growth, and revenue for your growing company.

Show Notes

[0:44] Justin’s journey in the institute 

[1:47] The most significant milestones, experiences, and learnings along his company journey

[3:59] How do we drive growth?

[9:00] Shifting balance: How did they shift from product-led to an enterprise?

[18:53] Changing the brand of the company as part of going enterprise 

[20:33] How has pricing changed for their business?

[21:56] Focusing on the product analytics market by making sure to build the best product 

[28:25] How do they continue to build an excellent analytics product?

[28:56] Make sure to understand your consumers because people want to buy from a company that understands them.

[30:44] How investing in high-quality content can produce better results?

[32:23] Always start with a strategy in mind

[37:04] Understanding the Vision Strategy Roadmap

About Justin Bauer

Justin Bauer is the senior vice president of product at Amplitude. In his role at Amplitude, he leads product management, design, education, growth, and analytics for Amplitude's Digital Optimization System. Before he joined Amplitude, he was the CEO and co-founder of Rivalry Games, which was acquired by You42 in 2015.

Profile

Justin on LinkedIn

Justin on Twitter

Amplitude

To understand usability and boost user engagement, one key concept you need to master is friction logs. In this episode, we cover ideas and recommendations for using them to unlock product-led growth with the help of Pulkit Agrawal, the co-founder of Chameleon. 

Pulkit shares his knowledge about what a friction log is, how to make them valuable and the careful considerations you need to consider when making decisions about both good and bad friction. 

Show Notes

[01:47] Friction log is a stream of consciousness on a piece of paper.

[04:07] User testing or a friction log. What's the distinction?

[07:32] You don't need to explain every step, and not every step is equal!

[08:18] What does Pulkit want everyone to consider when it comes to friction logs?

[13:46] What better options do you have to consider when making decisions in both good and bad friction?

[17:10] New patterns develop, and people's expectations change along with the market.

[21:02] How can we improve the onboarding experience?

[24:34] It is unnecessary to perfect the journey or the friction log.

[26:58] Improve product experiences by combining qualitative and quantitative data!

[32:39] Never deploy anything that might lead a customer or end user to see something they are not requesting or expecting.

[37:17] Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing, so learn these factors Pulit is talking about. 

About Pulkit Agrawal

Previously, Pulkit helped unemployed youth launch businesses in rural India, studied engineering at the University of Cambridge, and worked in data modeling and analysis in London.

About Chameleon

The most well-known product adoption platform, Chameleon, was created to let modern software companies rebrand and alter their user experiences. Teams can easily create, deploy, test, and iterate on in-product experiences, such as banners, tooltips, modals, walkthroughs, checklists, and more, using its no-code Builder.

Profile

Pulkit Agrawal on LinkedIn

Chameleon Blog

Jeff Coyle is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of MarketMuse, an industry-leading content planning technology.

Today, he will explain how community management principles can support product-led growth. Jeff also discusses how community drives “sales-led growth” and the importance of employee advocacy in the success of a community. MarketMuse, his platform, identifies content quality issues and creates a channel for content optimization.

Show Notes

[1:10] Traditional product management and traditionally trained product managers do not typically come from the land of social media.

[5:31] How has the community influenced overall product-led growth?

[8:22] The importance of having thick skin is that you can experience what it’s like to have a negative emotion emerge and create more transparent communication.

[15:54] Employee advocacy and its social impact

[23:18] Key takeaways from this episode that listeners should consider.

About Jeff Coyle

Coyle is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of MarketMuse. This company assists content marketers in establishing topical authority, improving content quality, and transforming semantic research into actionable insights.

Prior to joining MarketMuse, he previously operated his own marketing consultancy and managed the Traffic, Search, and Engagement team for TechTarget, a leader in B2B technology publishing and lead generation.

Links

Product Led Slack Community

Profile

Market Muse

Email address: [email protected]

Jeff on LinkedIn

Jeff on Twitter