Product-Led Growth Quotes

“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. - Warren Buffett”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“And by “tell the story right,” I mean be a good storyteller: Open with a hook. Lure the reader from one line to the next. Start in the middle of the action. Create compelling characters. Set the story around a central conflict. If you don’t have conflict, you don’t have a story (or a hook). And who would read that?”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Until you know what your users are trying to accomplish in your product, you’ll lead them to mountaintops they never wanted to climb.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“To chip away at your ability debt, you need to be ruthless about reducing friction. Even non-trivial steps like activation emails can crater your free-to-paid conversion rate.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Given how hard it is to distill the value of a social outcome, I like to leave it as the cherry on the top. We should always over deliver. One of the most powerful ways to do is to make the customer look like a badass for choosing your product.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“B2B buyers may, in fact, be even more emotional than their B2C counterparts.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Some will say you should go with your gut. Others say that you should go with your gut, then double it. Either way, it seems most pricing advice out there is gastrointestinal-based rather than brain-based.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“in a product-led business, your revenue and customer acquisition model are married together. (It’s an arranged marriage, but a marriage nonetheless.) In a sales-led business, the revenue and customer acquisition models are separated.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Functional value metrics are “per user” or “per 100 videos.” Pricing scales around a function of usage. Outcome-based value metrics charge based on an outcome, like how many views a video received or how much money you made your customer.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“A value metric is the way you measure value exchange in your product.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Often, it’s easy to think that we sell products based on the functional outcome they accomplish. Businesses need live-chat software, right? No. Businesses do not need live-chat software. But, businesses do need a new and better way to acquire customers.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“If you go with a bottom-up selling strategy that attracts middle management and teams, you help your potential buyers use the product, experience meaningful value, and make the case to purchase your solution to upper management.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“By making it easy for people to experience the value of our product, we transformed it into a powerful customer acquisition model.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“A go-to-market (GTM) strategy10 is an action plan that specifies how a company will reach target customers and achieve a competitive advantage.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Questions to ask yourself when deciding if a dominant growth strategy is right for you: Is your TAM big enough to support a freemium model? Does your product solve a specific job significantly better and at a lower cost than anyone else in the market? Can your user realize significant ongoing value quickly with little-to-no help from company personnel? Do you want to be the undisputed market leader in your category?”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“2. A significantly lower CAC Free software also builds a moat around your business in three powerful ways: Faster sales cycles: By having your prospects onboard themselves, you can significantly reduce your prospect’s time-to-value and sales cycle. Once people experience the value in your product, the next logical thing to do is upgrade. The quicker your users can accomplish a key outcome in your product, the quicker you can convert your free users into paying customers. High revenue-per-employee (RPE): Software was always built to scale well, but with a product-led approach, you’re able to do more with fewer people on your team. Less hand-holding means higher profit margins per customer. Just take a look at Ahrefs in 2019. They have a $40 million ARR business with 40 employees. Better user experience: Since your product is built for people to onboard themselves, people can experience meaningful value in your product without any hand-holding.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“My biggest regret is that our first customer was $1M ACV. Ever since that first customer, our product, go-to-market, our support model have all been pulled in one direction — high-end enterprise. Our first $1M ACV customer forced us to get on the elephant hunting treadmill, and we’ve never been able to get off it. Our board, our employees, everyone expects us to only go after customers that were as large or larger than our first customer. And I’ve been watching this new competitor emerge that’s going after the same market as we are, except from the low end. They are tiny but growing rapidly. And it’s too hard for us to compete with them — we don’t have the people, technology stack, support model or frankly, the mindset.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Product-led companies flip the traditional sales model on its head. Instead of helping buyers go through a long, drawn-out sales cycle, they give the buyer the “keys” to their product. The company, in turn, focuses on helping the buyer improve their life. Upgrading to a paid plan becomes a no-brainer.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Truly great software companies are built to be product-led.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“This isn’t limited to the Business to Consumer (B2C) space. Three out of every four Business to Business (B2B) buyers would rather self-educate than learn about a product from a sales representative,according to Forrester.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“To help you find the right inputs, recall the UCD framework and why companies fail: You don’t understand your value. You aren’t communicating your value well enough. You aren’t delivering on your value fast enough.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“What do my best customers do regularly in the product? What do my best customers not do in the product?”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

“Understand your value. Communicate the perceived value of your product. Deliver on what you promise.”
― Wes Bush, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself