AMA with Japna Sethi
Head of Growth at Productboard, Japna Sethi takes us on her journey introducing a freemium product within a sales-led organization. Get an inside look at her experiments, metrics, and triumphs.
“When you're first launching a free plan, teams can be afraid of a lot of things including impact on pipeline. Start by sequencing your riskiest bets to debunk those fears.”
💡 Key Moments
- (07:13) How Productboard evolved their go-to-market motion
- (10:26) Productboard’s journey to find a balance between their product-led and sales-led motions
- (13:45) How Japna launched a free plan and what were her key metrics
- (33:30) How do you decide on the limits on a free plan? How to design what’s included in the free plan?
- (53:35) When should a company not offer a free plan or when is it too early to offer a free plan?
▶️ Session play-by-play
- (00:00) Lightning round
- (03:29) More about Japna and her journey to becoming the head of Growth
- (07:13) How Productboard evolved their go-to-market motion
- (09:07) How the Growth team is structured (and all of the cross-functional overlaps)
- (10:26) Productboard’s journey to balance their product-led and sales-led motions
- (13:45) How Japna launched a free plan and what were her key metrics
- (17:02) What are some experiments you can run to test your free plan
- (18:01) Sequencing a roadmap to start with risky bets and debunking fears
- (20:01) How did the team test for cannibalization of the sales pipeline through the free offering
- (20:58) A look into the pricing page test that drove 3x engagement
- (23:13) Tactics to keeping momentum and getting internal buy-in to keep freemium motion alive
- (28:13) What types of pushback did Japna experience when introducing freemium
- (33:30) How do you decide on the limits on a free plan? How to design what’s included in the free plan?
- (44:20) When is PLG not the right GTM motion for an enterprise products?
- (53:35) When should a company not offer a free plan or when is it too early to offer a free plan?
- (55:02) How do you go about starting a free trial (starting from the very beginning)
The People
Japna leads the Growth team at Productboard. She has been at the forefront of driving growth at leading technology companies like Dropbox and has also been an active angel investor in cutting-edge products like HeadsUp. Japna has a diverse set of product experiences ranging from growth, mobile, productivity and collaboration to health and hardware.
Franciska is the Head of Growth Marketing at Amplitude, a leading digital analytics platform that helps companies build better products. She has been with the company since 2021 when she started as a Senior Product Manager working on the developer experience.
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