Product-led acquisition

Product-led growth uses the product as the primary acquisition vehicle. Users find value before buying, share organically, drive adoption within teams.

Common patterns

• Freemium (Slack, Notion)
• Free trial (most SaaS)
• Open-core (many dev tools)
• Viral invites (Zoom, Calendly)

Requires

• Self-serve onboarding
• Clear aha moment in free tier
• Natural expansion paths
• Sticky usage patterns

PLG metrics

• Time to aha
• Freemium to paid conversion
• Self-serve revenue %
• Expansion MRR

Not for everyone

PLG works for horizontal tools used by many. Doesn't fit enterprise with committee buying or complex custom needs.

What to do with this

• Measure time-to-aha and freemium-to-paid conversion as your two PLG north stars, both must improve together
• Design viral workspace mechanics (invite teammates, shared artifacts) into the core flow, bolted-on virality rarely works
• Keep the free tier generous enough to reach real aha, stingy free tiers produce lots of signups and no conversions
• Don't force PLG on enterprise sales motions, committee buying doesn't convert from a signup flow and you'll burn engineering effort
• Layer PLG on top of sales-led for hybrid motions, self-serve for individuals + sales-led for expansion into teams is the emerging playbook