We’ve covered product-led motions and go-to markets in recent blog posts. Today, we’re going to highlight some real life examples to help paint a better picture.
Some of these examples use pure product-led growth (PLG) motions. Others use a combination of PLG and sales for a hybrid product-led sales go-to market. But in all 12 cases, product-led motions drove rapid growth through smart product and funnel design.
For each example, we make sure to include key PLG motion elements, end results, and what helped products get traction.
Slack is the B2B communication tool. It started out as a work chat app that was easy to use and free to try. Over time, its feature set expanded to include video calls, integrations with other SaaS products, and collaboration features.
Slack’s PLG motion was built into the product. The app was easy and free to install. The chat feature was the perfect WhatsApp alternative for professionals. And the desktop-first interface was ideal for work teams.
Most importantly, Slack users benefitted from other people installing the app. The more of their team joined, the more people they could talk to on Slack. This, plus a frictionless self-serve sign-up process, made the app spread like wildfire.
Result: Slack came out in 2014. By 2015, 10,000 daily active users were signing up each week. Today’s daily active user count is 10+ million - and 2 in 3 users convert from free to paid accounts.
Why do we use Zoom and not Skype or Google Meet? The latter two SaaS products came first. Both had a much bigger user base than Zoom by the time it came out.
The answer is simple. Zoom is easy to use, doesn’t require a Google Workspace account, and supports a large number of participants. It has high-quality audio and video, as well as a free version (with a 40-minute time limit).
When the world needed a video call app during the pandemic, Zoom was the natural answer. Ease of use and the free version won users over. Support for large meetings quickly made the app spread through organizations.
Result: 300 million daily users, $2.6 billion revenue in 2020.
HubSpot is a multi-functional platform with features that help marketing, sales, and service. HubSpot does all kinds of things, from hosting your website to managing customer relationships and giving you data insights.
Unlike most PLG motions, HubSpot’s isn’t 100% product-focused. Instead, it comes in the form of educational content.
Hubspot has thousands of useful blog posts, videos, emails, webinars, etc. These make it easy to use the product to its full potential, getting more value out of it. The content is also highly shareable, encouraging users to drive referrals.
The product itself makes trials, conversions, and upsells easy for users as well. Signing up for content and basic HubSpot features costs nothing. The path to upgrades, renewals, and extra features is frictionless.
The combination of incredible educational resources, a free trial, and easy upgrade helped make HubSpot the go-to solution for marketing and sales.
Result: HubSpot has over 100,000 users. Its annual revenue exceeds $1 billion.
Today, many people know Atlassian as the company that bought Trello. But back in the day, Atlassian was best-known for creating Confluence and Jira.
As a pioneer in cloud-based enterprise apps, Atlassian caught on to PLG early on. They gave out free product versions, made their software valuable, and provided lots of useful integrations.
The tactics were simple but effective. They helped spread Jira and Confluence early on in the SaaS era.
Result: Atlassian is one of the biggest SaaS providers in the world, with over 200,000 customers and a whopping $1.6 billion in annual revenue.
Airtable was originally a relational database tool that then expanded to cover project management, form creation, and a lot more.
Airtable had a free version available via self-serve sign-up. Hundreds of customizable templates made it easy for users to quickly create tables and databases that solved problems and filled needs. Time-to-value was low; value was high.
A big part of Airtable’s success was its collaboration featureset. Tables and databases were easy for teams to create, manage, and use. This, and the high number of integrations (like Slack and Gmail), spread Airtable through organizations quickly.
Result: 200,000+ customers, $11 billion valuation as of 2021.
Calendly is the world’s most popular appointment-setting software. Users program their free hours, then get a unique URL that lets others book them for appointments in those slots.
Calendly succeeded because of an excellent product - fast and easy to use, intuitive to set up - and a feature-rich free version. The free version was useful, giving users a taste of what Calendly can do.
This drove sign-ups… And also made people booking appointments sign up for their own Calendly accounts. This, plus a deep list of integrations (e.g. with Google Calendar), helped put Calendly into hypergrowth.
Result: $70 million revenue, over 10 million users.
Monday.com is a newer case study. It’s an Israeli project management and collaboration tool with a deep feature-set. PLG-optimized shareability is built into the product; it’s made for teams, so a single user will encourage colleagues to join if satisfied.
Another PLG element here is convenient pricing: a free trial, a low-cost plan for small teams, and an easy upgrade path. It’s easy and frictionless to join and onboard your team. You can start out paying very little, and increase spend in step with usage.
Last but not least, the product is easy to get value from. The core product is intuitive, but you also get hundreds of templates that make work easier for teams… And a huge knowledge base consisting of blog posts, FAQ pages, and more.
All you have to do to make Monday.com work for you is basically show up! No wonder users spread it to their organizations so quickly.
Result: Between the quality product, easy onboarding, and lots of valuable templates, Monday.com ended up going into hypergrowth. In 2020, their revenue reached $613 million - with 100,000 paying users.
Trello is the original project management app for developers. It was extremely easy to use, with a drag-and-drop interface that let users move tasks through project stages effortlessly.
Since Trello was so simple to use, teams actively asked colleagues to join their Trello boards. It helped that Trello offered a free month of Trello Gold in exchange for referrals.
Result: 55 million registered users, acquired for a whopping $425 million in 2017. The acquiring company was Atlassian; our fourth entry.
Dropbox’s PLG motion is famous with marketers, growth hackers, and salespeople. First offered in 2007, Dropbox’s core product was a cloud storage and file sharing tool.
he product was intuitive and easy to use. It offered a free version with limited storage at a time when free storage was rare. And users could get even more free storage in exchange for referring new users to the service.
The combination of a free trial, easy-to-use product, and extra storage in exchange for referrals catapulted Dropbox to unicorn status.
The result: 500 million registered users; $2.325 billion in revenue as of 2022.
Canva is the cloud-based visual content creation tool. With a drag-and-drop user interface, thousands of templates, and a flat learning curve, it offered immense value. Anyone could use it to produce quality visuals in minutes.
A free version with a rich (but limited) feature set made it easy to see the product’s benefits. Referrals were incentivized with Canva Credits, which gave users premium features in exchange for bringing new users in.
Another benefit was Canva playing well with other apps. It had a long list of integrations, and templates that were pre-made for services like Instagram and Facebook. Ease of use, low time-to-value, and incentivized referrals put the startup in hypergrowth.
Result: 60 million active users and a $40 billion valuation as of 2021.
Figma is a UX design and prototyping tool. It’s mainly used to create visual content, including mock-ups for web pages and apps. Figma was acquired by Adobe for $20 billion in 2022.
Figma’s core product was easy-to-use, valuable to designers and developers, and free (for a basic subscription). But an important part of their go-to market was a shareable free version.
This free version lets users invite an unlimited number of people to projects. People could both view others’ work and collaborate easily - and since the core product was solid, Figma spread quickly.
Result: Figma had an annual revenue of over $400 million in 2022, with an estimated 5+ million users.
You’ve just seen 12 examples of product-led growth in SaaS companies. They achieved hypergrowth by offering free product versions, easy trial sign-ups, and simple upgrades to paid subscriptions.
For most companies, it's hard to offer these things. That's where Salesbricks comes in. Our software streamlines the trial-to-cash process by making it easy to process trials, manage subscriptions, and control entitlements at scale. We can also help you create beautiful, interactive self-serve quotes and checkout pages in seconds.
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