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| There Really Aren’t Enough PLG Magicians Out There to Hire. Not Yet. Posted: 24 Feb 2022 06:55 AM PST I've recently had several different conversations with founders looking to hire "PLG experts". One wanted to hire "Mr/Ms PLG" to make their product more viral. Another wanted a "VP of PLG" to complement their marketing efforts. PLG, or Product-Led Growth, can mean, so many things. Everyone would prefer a product where 50% or more of the leads come from the product itself. Where there's a viral boost to acquisition. Where the collaborative nature of the app itself brings in the next generation of leads. And by all means go build that. Even a lightly "viral" app, even an app with just a partial PLG motion, can give you a huge boost. Even if just 20% of your customers in essence create themselves from your app, that's a huge boost not just today, but an incredible one over time. Here's my only suggestion. It's too early in this PLG cycle to hire a "VP of PLG". This cross-functional magician doesn't exist yet. Instead: * Hire a great VP of Product with strong freemium experience. They know all or most of the PLG playbook. Everyone from Trello to Webflow to Asana to Calendly to MongoDB to Elastic are running different pieces of this. Hire a truly great product leader from here, ideally a Director or above, and they'll know how to add or improve your self-serve and product-led features. Arguably, PLG is just freemium with better instrumentation. That's Aaron Levie's argument here: * Hire a great VP of Marketing with a strong SMB and growth background. They'll know how to leverage sign-ups, free users, drip marketing, and in-app conversion to drive up your customer count. * Hire a great VP of Sales that has worked in a "hybrid" self-serve and inside-sales environment. They'll know the cadence, how to mine the free base for paid customers, how to staff up, etc. In a few years, perhaps there will be a ton of VP of Product-Led Growth hires. For now, find that expertise in your VP of Product, Marketing and Sales. Probably in that order. Rather that searching out a magician with PLG in the title. For a great discussion on how freemium and PLG has — and hasn't — changed over the past generations of SaaS software, watch this great SaaStr Scale deep dive from the CMO of Calendly: The post There Really Aren't Enough PLG Magicians Out There to Hire. Not Yet. appeared first on SaaStr. |
| Posted: 23 Feb 2022 06:49 AM PST There's no doubt about it –– remote and hybrid work environments are here to stay. As Loom CEO Joe Thomas stresses, "Flexibility is the future." Flexibility means freedom to work where and how you wish. Yet, despite the big step forward in providing work flexibility, there is also a sharp increase in burnout. 85% of workers say that work stress is greater now than it was five years ago, and 60% report a significant increase in the frequency of meetings. In this special SaaStr Annual presentation, Thomas shares how async communication improves the work experience, enhances company culture, and builds a better business. What is Async, and Why is It Important?To understand async (asynchronous) communication, it's important to first define its opposite; synchronous communication. Sync (Synchronous) Communication: This is real-time communication, where two or more people are engaging simultaneously. This method is best for bursty communication and culture-building. Examples of sync include in-person meetings, Zoom calls, and phone calls. Async (Asynchronous) Communication: Thomas describes async as communication that "is not happening in real-time. Someone is documenting something, sending it to someone else, then it's consumed with a lag time in between." Essentially, it's a style of work that allows responses to be completed in a time frame that works for each employee. Async enables work to get done whenever, wherever. This communication style works best for deep work and information dissemination. Examples of async include Trello, Loom, and Notion. Note: Some communication tools and methods can operate as both sync and async, including SMS messaging, Figma, and Slack.
GitLab: Creating a Standout Async Employee ExperienceGitLab is one of the world's largest all-remote companies, with 1400+ employees around the globe. They've used async to empower their teams to live and work where they're most fulfilled. A snippet from the GitLab handbook that describes their async method reads, "How would I deliver this message, present this work, or move this project forward right now if no one else on my team or in my company were awake?" A few best practices that GitLab employs are as follows:
Figma: Building World-Class Products AsyncIt can be challenging to build a great product while working remotely, but Figma was able to do so. They launched the public beta of FigJam in just six months during the pandemic. So how did they do it? Enabling async product feedback was one key to accomplishing this. Async accelerated their feedback and ensured that all voices were heard. They created a public #figjam-feedback slack channel so that multiple departments could contribute and be represented equally and quickly.
Loom: Hiring Teams Async"A huge benefit of hiring talent from a remote-first perspective is that we get to tap into a global talent pool from the earliest days," says Thomas. Loom has spent time improving their hiring with async, with pretty impressive results: The company has a 93% satisfaction rate for their interview process. Here's how they do it. Loom uses async video throughout its recruiting and interview experience to connect with candidates in a very personal way while offering a window into what work life is like at Loom. The candidates are also asked to use async videos to create and present on their own terms. Loom leadership believes the async format offers the clearest view of a candidate's work and skills. The async video leads to 50% higher pass-through rates. Finally, the async video allows relationship-building and connection throughout recruitment. For example, Loom sends out "welcome" or "congratulations" videos for prospective talent to get to know the company better.
Upwork: Scaling Async CollaborationUpwork helps connect freelancers and clients, but their marketplace didn't operate optimally with live meetings and other sync tools in the early days. 21% of phone calls were never completed, and 57% of clients that tried video conferencing only did it once. The trend that they noticed was that synchronous tools simply didn't work as well as asynchronous communication. They decided to realign themselves to be more asynchronous, so they created async content and tools for freelancers and clients for every step of their working process. This shift led to faster completion of complex projects and decreased meetings. The companies that can confidently leverage the freelancer workforce with fewer meetings, clearer communication, and quicker project completion will win –– and they'll do it async.
Key Takeaways
The post 4 Ways to Get to $10 Billion by Working Async (Without Burning Out) with Loom CEO Joe Thomas (Pod 531 + Video) appeared first on SaaStr. |
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