How PLG companies find product-market fit: Sandhya Hegde on product-led growth

How PLG companies find product-market fit: Sandhya Hegde on product-led growth

Author: Unusual Ventures February 20, 2023 Duration: 50:22

In this highlights episode, host Sandhya Hegde shares her framework for the three modes of product-led growth and how some iconic companies pursuing PLG found product-market fit: Snyk, Webflow and Nextdoor.


Join us as we discuss:


3.02: The three modes of PLG—fast-working (Snyk),  paradigm-shifting (Webflow), and habit-forming (Nextdoor)


6: 30: How Snyk challenged the way security products were traditionally adopted by focusing on developers


14: 47: How Nextdoor executed early interviews with users to build their first prototype


19: 05: How Webflow built for its initial beachhead persona and differentiated itself from other existing website builders


23:13: How Snyk added specific capabilities to their product to enable CISO buyers to embrace their dev-first solutions


27: 51: How Nextdoor recruited founding members who would become evangelists for the platform within their neighborhoods


31: 41: How Webflow engaged with customer feedback to build a first-of-its kind visual CMS


37: 33: How Webflow’s CTO led growth engineering to build organic and viral awareness for their product


41: 18: Lessons from how Nextdoor leveraged and cultivated community, and how to build successful communities organically


45: 30: How the Snyk team was oriented around growth and evolved with their product offerings


Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and


Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya


LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/


Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.


Further reading from the Startup Field Guide:


-Introduction to Product-Led Growth:

https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/introduction-to-plg


-Nail your self-serve product:

https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/nail-your-self-serve-product


-Free plan vs. free trial in PLG

https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/free-plan-vs-trial-plan


Behind every so-called overnight success in software, there's a long, often messy journey of finding exactly what customers need and how to deliver it. That's the central theme explored in Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast. This series is built for those in the trenches of early-stage software companies, from founders just starting out to leaders tasked with building something from nothing. Each episode moves beyond theory, offering grounded conversations with people who have actually navigated these challenges. You'll hear them unpack the real work of identifying a true market need, the nuances of early hiring decisions, and the practical steps of crafting a go-to-market strategy. Fundraising, often a opaque process, gets broken down into more understandable components. The focus remains consistently on the actionable and the specific, providing a kind of audio manual for the foundational phase of a business. Tune in for a candid look at the less-glamorous, critical work that separates an idea from a viable company, all brought to you by Unusual Ventures. This podcast serves as a resource for turning those initial concepts into a sustainable operation, one hard-won lesson at a time.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 53

Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
Podcast Episodes
Jyoti Bansal on how Traceable found product-market fit [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:49
Jyoti Bansal is the CEO of @Harnessio and @TraceableAI . He is also a co-founder of Unusual Ventures.In a special episode of the Startup Field Guide podcast, Jyoti sits down with John Vrionis – his co-founder and friend…
Clay CEO Kareem Amin on AI-powered outreach for growth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:35
Clay is an AI-powered platform for sales prospecting that gathers data from over 75 sources to build lists and help growth teams send personalized outreach messages. Recently valued at over $500M, Clay has several high-p…
Scribe CEO Jennifer Smith on documenting workflows [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:04
Scribe makes it easy to share how you do your work by creating automated documentation. Scribe raised a Series B recently and has grown to millions of users with enterprise customers like Gong, LinkedIn, and Shopify. In…
Eightfold AI CEO Ashutosh Garg on managing talent with AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:38
Eightfold AI is a talent management platform used by hundreds of large organizations like Vodafone and Activision Blizzard. It helps them leverage data to find great people with the skills they need, both internally and…
Monte Carlo CEO Barr Moses on data reliability [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:15
Monte Carlo is an end-to-end data observability platform that monitors pipelines for missing or inaccurate data. Last valued at $1.6B, Monte Carlo has over 150 customers, including data teams at companies such as CNN, Je…
Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-powered search [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:14
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that answers user questions. Founded in 2022 and valued at over $1B, Perplexity recently crossed 10M monthly active users and is growing fast. In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chat…
Everlaw CEO AJ Shankar on how AI is accelerating legal tech [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:58
Everlaw is a legal tech company started in 2011 that helps law firms and corporations run what’s called “e-discovery”— essentially a process of investigating often massive piles of documents to find the key pieces of evi…
Deepgram's CEO Scott Stephenson on Speech AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:11
Deepgram is a voice AI company that has built an incredible reputation in the market for the quality of its speech recognition. Last valued at over $250M, Deepgram has over 500 customers, including NASA, Spotify, and Twi…