Today, almost everyone in the industry knows about product-led growth (PLG), the growth strategy that uses a product’s features and usage to drive customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. Whether you’re actively practicing PLG, are pushing your company toward adoption, or are simply aware of the model—today, PLG is more than a buzzy term. It’s a proven strategy that’s difficult to get right.
That's why Francois Ajenstat sat down with Sheila Vashee, the CMO of Figma, a collaborative interface design platform that implements a gold-standard example of PLG. Sheila also used PLG as Dropbox’s second marketing hire more than a decade ago, scaling the company to over a billion dollars.
So how can you access the kind of successful growth Sheila’s had? Sheila joined the Next Gen Builders podcast to teach us a thing or two about what she has learned. So grab your pen and tune in as she shares lessons from her PLG playbook. Listen to it and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube so you never miss an episode.
Lesson 1: PLG starts with the customer
A successful product and marketing strategy involves two ideas:
- Your customers only care about the problem you’re solving for them.
- You have to tell a good story about how you can help them solve their problem.
No matter how growth and data-driven PLG is, it all boils down to the customer and your storytelling.
To get there, Sheila offers advice: “You have to deeply, deeply understand who you’re talking to, what they care about, and what those problems are…then, you have to reach them where they are.”
Sheila points to Dropbox as an example of getting these fundamentals right. The team understood the customer problem: People needed a working and reliable way to get their stuff to different places. There were competitors offering similar products but they didn’t work. So, solving that problem and positioning the solution with the tagline “it just works” meant:
“People just loved it!” she said.
Because users loved it so much, they naturally wanted to bring it into their organizations. By getting those two aspects right, they built a viral growth mechanism where users referred new people to adopt Dropbox. More users were naturally inclined to adopt the product because it uniquely solved their needs.
Lesson 2: Grow acquisition by implementing a viral mechanism
Getting these two fundamentals right is enough to drive organic word-of-mouth growth. This is what we mean by a viral mechanism for growth, where existing users promote the product to increase acquisition.
These same core mechanics were in place at Figma, where there was initial user interest and “rabid love for the product,” she says. Opendoor, a residential real estate company, similarly grew from word-of-mouth from neighbor to neighbor.
Sheila explains that while it happened naturally at Dropbox, they later wanted to encourage more users to invite their friends by incentivizing them with something they really cared about.
“We offered users more space for inviting friends, which drove viral growth. The more people on the platform, the more valuable it became for everyone,” she recounts. “It took off like wildfire.”
This approach to growth didn’t just attract users who needed more space—it created a community of advocates who valued and trusted the product.
How can you implement a similar approach? Understand the early indicators of where customers see value and make sure that you’re incentivizing the right behaviors within the product.
Lesson 3: Align your entire company to PLG
Aside from building in a viral mechanism, there’s another motion Shelia says must be true: “For PLG [to work], the entire company has to be aligned around that model.”
She says the PLG model is how your product, growth, marketing, sales, and support strategies are built. For a company to be successful, the whole company must center around PLG.
She says to structure your PLG motion with really clear ownership across the funnel. Give ownership over different stages of PLG to different teams. For instance, marketing might own acquisition through onboarding. Product might own activation, engagement, retention, and so on. Some programs might have joint ownership, but you have to really define the joint ownership and success measure.
“There’s always conflicts that arise [over shared ownership],” she says. “Like, ‘Oh, this lead wasn’t a good lead,’ or ‘You’re not working my leads,’” she says, describing the classic marketing-sales conflicts. But the best you can do is have shared metrics, and establish a rapport and goodwill across teams so people can work together.
“Those teams need each other to be successful,” she says.
Lesson 4: PLG needs a data-driven culture
And speaking of shared metrics, Sheila also emphasizes the importance of being data-driven:
“You have to understand every detail of where users are coming from, what actions they’re taking, and what’s working. Everyone on the team needs to be data-driven,” she explains. This meticulous approach ensures that every decision is informed by real user behavior and insights, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
“Fifty years ago the saying was, ‘50% of my marketing is working, I just don’t know which half’ and it was accepted. I can’t imagine that being accepted now…We have a million surfaces we’re trying to optimize constantly, which is why data is so important.”
For those embarking on a similar journey, Sheila’s advice is straightforward: “Get really curious. Ask a lot of questions, meet with companies or people who have done similar things, and gather as much information as possible.” By cultivating curiosity and seeking out knowledge, you can build a strong foundation for growth and innovation.
Tune in to Sheila’s Story
There are more lessons in the Podcast, including how you can use PLG to gain traction in the enterprise market, or how sales-led growth and product-led growth can play nicely together. But, you’ll just have to listen to the podcast to catch them all.
Tune in to the Next Gen Builders episode to dive deeper into Sheila Vashee’s journey, her PLG playbook, and the valuable lessons she’s learned along the way.
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