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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20Growth: Inside Dropbox, Salesforce & Heroku's Product-Led Growth Engine; What Works & What Doesn't | Why Startups Doing Paid Under $100M ARR are not PLG | Why PLG is a Business Model, Not a Go-To-Market Motion with Adam Gross, Former CEO @ Vimeo

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adam Gross is one of the masters of product-led growth (PLG). Most recently, Adam was Vimeo's interim CEO. Before Vimeo, Adam was CEO of Heroku, which he joined after selling his startup, Cloudconnect in 2013. Additionally, Adam has held executive leadership roles at Salesforce and Dropbox, and has been an active angel investor & advisor to companies, including Buildkite, Cribl, and Tailscale.

In Today’s Episode with Adam Gross We Discuss:

  1. PLG Tactics from Dropbox, Heroku and Salesforce:

  • What were Adam’s biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce? How did it shape his growth mindset?

  • What did Adam learn about customer acquisition at Dropbox?

  • What would Adam most like to change about growth today?

  1. Product-Led Growth: The Fundamentals:

  • What is growth? What is it not? What do founders get wrong about growth?

  • Why does Adam think PLG is not for everybody?

  • What do most great PLG businesses have in common?

  • How are value propositions segmented in PLG? How can startups transition from individual to enterprise clients?

  • Why does Adam think startups doing paid acquisition sub $100M aren’t actually PLG?

  1. The Secrets to Optimizing Growth Channels:

  • What are the most common reasons fast-growing companies plateau?

  • How does Adam advise founders on diversifying channels?

  • What are the biggest mistakes founders make when scaling into enterprise?

  • How should startups do effective product marketing in horizontal products?

  • What is emotive & strategic marketing? How should startups balance both?

  1. How Angel Investing Changes How You View Companies:

  • What are Adam’s top 3 pieces of advice for founders?

  • What does Adam mean when he says you are either hiring a poet or a librarian?

  • What are the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring?

  • What was Adam’s biggest investment miss? What did he learn from it?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

PLG is not for everybody. And PLG is not a go-to-market motion.

0:04.9

PLG is a business model. Every, not even great, but good PLG business I've seen, has some

0:12.0

specialized customer acquisition piece that is not paid acquisition. If you are doing PLG and

0:19.5

you're doing paid acquisition, sub a hundred million in revenue, I'm not sure you are doing PLG and you're doing paid acquisition, sub 100 million in revenue,

0:22.7

I'm not sure you're really PLG. This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings, and we're joined today

0:28.0

by an all-time master of product-led growth, or PLG, Adam Gross. Hailing from Salesforce, Dropbox,

0:35.2

and Heroku, Adam has seen the good and the great of PLG.

0:38.7

And this episode is a masterclass in when PLG works, how it works, lessons from the best,

0:44.9

and mistakes that founders can and need to avoid if they want to execute a PLG strategy well.

0:51.4

It's time to get the pen and paper out. This is such an actionable show.

0:55.2

But before we dive into the show's day, short form video has never been more important

0:59.3

for your business. Social media managers, growth marketers, this is the single biggest

1:03.8

opportunity you have today. They say ad creative is king, but man is UGC creative a pain in the

1:09.9

ass to pull together? Imagine if you didn't have to.

1:12.6

Captions just launched AI creator ads, so you can produce dozens of UGC-style creatives instantly.

1:18.6

Just cast your AI creator, paste in your product URL, and drop in your product images.

1:24.6

AI will take care of the rest.

1:26.6

Captions will generate dozens of

1:28.2

UGC-style creatives in seconds, 10x your creative output, and test more hooks than you ever thought

1:34.1

possible, because let's be honest, your current ad creative is fatiguing as we speak.

1:39.4

UGC ads have never been so easy, thanks to AI, save on the back and forth, try AI creator ads on

1:45.7

captions today. And speaking of game-changing tools like captions, when I spoke to Canva co-founder

...

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