Elena Verna on how B2B growth is changing, product-led growth, product-led sales, why you should go freemium not trial, what features to make free, and much more

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2022

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Elena Verna has led growth at some of today’s most successful B2B businesses, including Miro as CMO, Surveymonkey as SVP of Growth, and now at Amplitude as interim Head of Growth. She’s also worked closely with over a dozen companies on growth and product strategy, including companies like MongoDB, Clockwise, and Netlify (where she sits on the board of directors). Elena is undoubtedly one of the smartest people on growth strategy in the world.

—

Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Persona: https://withpersona.com/lenny

• Stytch: https://stytch.com/

• PostHog: https://posthog.com/lenny

—

In this episode, we cover:

1) How did Elena go from an analyst at Safeway to Head of Product at Amplitude?

2) What’s changing in B2B growth?

3) What exactly is “product-led growth,” and how can you apply it at every stage of growth?

4) How is PLG already transforming itself?

5) Why do you need to be both product-led and sales-led?

6) Why does PLG often get crushed when you move upmarket, and how do you avoid this?

7) What it looks like when your PLG motion is dying.

8) Why product-led is the future of sales.

9) Why is freemium the way to go, over trial?

10) Why should you hire internally for your first growth hire?

—

Where to find Elena:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenaverna

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Eleanor Verna is possibly the single most experienced and smartest person ungrowth strategy in the entire world.
0:09.0	I am not being hyperbolic.
0:11.0	Eleanor led growth at Miro, Survey Monkey, and now at amplitude, and she's worked with
0:16.4	companies like Mongo NHP NHP to help them figure out their growth strategies.
0:21.6	In our chat, we cover B2B growth
0:24.4	strategies, what's changing in B2B growth, why freemium is usually a better path
0:29.1	than going trial, why every company should be thinking about their product-led growth strategy,
0:34.0	how product-led growth often gets crushed as you move up market and how to avoid
0:38.0	that, the emergence of product-led sales, and how that might be the future of growth,
0:42.0	and also how to hire your first growth lead. My brain is always buzzing after I talk to
0:47.8	Eleanor and I suspect yours will too. Enjoy the episode.
0:51.6	This episode Enjoy the episode.
0:53.0	This episode is brought to you by persona.
0:57.0	persona helps founders, product managers, and engineers easily solve any identity related problem,
1:03.0	including handling KYC, AML, and basically all manner of identity fraud.
1:08.0	You can integrate persona in an afternoon
1:10.0	and personalize your flows using their SDK to meet your users on any device.
1:14.9	persona's identity building blocks allow you to manage your entire
1:18.9	end-to-end onboarding flow, verifying that each new user and their data are legitimate.
1:23.7	persona is trusted by both startups and the world's largest companies including
1:28.0	Square, BlockFi, Gustavo, and Udome.
1:30.8	And for a limited time, persona is offering listeners of this
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.