Top reasons we heard

1. Challenging for 1^st time PLG teams: First-time founders and CTOs find it extremely challenging. It takes 2+ yrs to build towards it.

2. PLG is not their core DNA: Most startups do not understand what they need to do to make their products self-servable for their end-users.

3. No Standard Specifications: Building for PLG is very different from building a classic B2B SaaS product for SLG.

4. Engineers attempt to stitch different tools together: Typically, they have to choose and stitch 20+ different categories of tools, with a total of 400+ individual products (as of early 2024).

5. Analytics and GTM teams depend on Product Engineering: Until a basic product is ready for self-serve, growth teams can’t do much. They tend to wait on Product/Engineering to show some proof-of-concept.

Building and Operating Self-Serve is non-trivial, expensive and custom

PLG Readiness is a new chasm. Most early-stage SaaS companies burn 30-40% of their raised capital in building the self-serve infrastructure

Implementing Product-Led Growth (PLG) in a SaaS company involves a collaborative effort across various departments. The effort in terms of spend and time can vary widely depending on the size of the company, the current state of the product, and the specific PLG strategies employed. Below is a table that outlines a general framework for the effort required by each department.

Which departments need to work together?

The following is a departmental breakdown of a mid-scale $10-100M ARR company focusing on PLG+ motions.

Note:

• The number of individuals involved and the spending are indicative and can vary.

• The spending includes salaries, SaaS tools, training, and other resources.

• A successful PLG strategy often requires a cultural shift and buy-in from all levels of the organization.

• Continuous iteration based on user feedback is crucial for PLG.

① ENGINEERING an end-user-initiated (Self-Service) product is very different than building for Sales-Initiated products.

Sales-led approaches are in sharp contrast with self-serve products. The sales team initiates a Proof of Concept with customers, initiates an account(tenant) provisioning request to the Engineering/operations team, invites the customer’s admins, on-boards them and gives them a usecase-by-usecase walkthrough.

In a self-service world, end-users are in control of signing up to your product, trying and buying small (most times). Building for event-based user actions requires orchestration across tools and teams.

With end-users initiating most of the actions, it is now imperative to do the following

1. Authenticating an end-user

2. Auto-enriching the end-user to find out details of the demographic and firmographic profile

3. Adding to wait lists – especially in case of blocking a surge of users signing up while they pilot with a small set of known customers

4. Granting User Access to the product

5. Onboarding the user – helping them set up and use the product

6. Enrolling the user/account into a Free Trial (or any other free plans)

7. Provisioning users and Accounts (aka Tenant) into the system

8. Allowing newly signed-up users to join existing Tenants, if any.

9. Sending Welcome email notifications

10. And much more…

② ANALYZING who the users are And what they do with your products - requires significant investments in Product Analytics.

Product Management, UX, and Engineering teams have to collaborate across the board to design and optimize the user journey. This involves

1. Buy: Choosing & acquiring Product Analytics tooling

2. Instrument code for SaaS telemetry events (take 3-6 months),

3. Create PLG Analytics Dashboards and Customer Journeys

   1. Includes Standard SaaS Analytics reports like Acquisition, Retention, Activation, etc.

   2. Create custom reports for Feature Usage, Subscription Retention

4. Start Correlating with releases & business changes.

5. Attempt to integrate the analysis into Custom lifecycle marketing (feedback loop). E.g. When a user is stuck with setup, send an in-app message/email to figure out how to get unstuck.

6. Rinse and Repeat

③ DRIVING GROWTH, typically increasing engagement and monetization - requires process automation across Sales, Revenue, and CSM tooling

Because end-users are in control, they prefer to do things of their own will and time. Constantly nagging them to buy/upgrade has a higher chance of churn. Instead, figuring out when to talk to them, and “manage for success”, requires process automation and data-sharing across Sales, Revenue, and CSM teams.

1. Try: Figure out what features, length of trials, and use cases to drive Activation moments.

2. Engage: Get users to use and find enough value to solve their “jobs”

3. Buy: Provide in-app/self-serve ways to purchase the products. Transparent pricing and flexible (e.g. Monthly/Annual) plans, with clear articulation on what they get per plan, are reasonable expectations from modern users.

4. Upgrade: Providing clear quotas (product limits) and additional incentives (e.g. more solutions for JTBD, more features, more security, higher SLAs, etc)

5. Downgrade / Churn: Allowing users to do in-app downgrades/cancel plans, still providing enough incentives to continue to use the products.

6. CSM / Feedback: Collecting feedback (e.g. more convenience, more integrations, more value) within the product.

7. RevOps: Understand and experiment with pricing plans, value, and packaging features to drive growth - requires data across usage, subscription, and product feedback.

The struggle to build each of these areas is real. There are lot many point solutions out there.

However, the struggle to bring them all together takes $1-3M and 2+ years.

This is the driving force behind ThriveStack
- to simplify the Self-Serve process for those building SaaS solutions.

Ready to explore?

Plg Vs Self Service

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PLG vs Self-Service

A side-by-side comparison to identify their similarities and differences, and how they impact the B2B SaaS sector.

We've consulted a range of sources to gather diverse viewpoints on the relationship between PLG and Self-Service.

According to Growth Loop, PLG and Self-Service are different; PLG is a component within the broader Self-Service.

Results from a LinkedIn poll provide industry insights into the perceived differences or similarities between PLG and Self-Service.

Elena Verna clarifies that while PLG always involves Self-Service, not all Self-Service strategies qualify as PLG.

We turned to Generative AI for a different angle, asking if this relationship can be quantified or represented mathematically.

Generative AI attempts to frame PLG and Self-Service in a mathematical context, highlighting their interrelation.

Understanding that Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a function of Self-Service plus additional elements, let's examine the specific capabilities within your product that users expect to navigate independently, aligning with a PLG strategy.

In the intersection of Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Sales-Led Growth (SLG), Self-Service stands as a pivotal component. Let's dissect this overlap:

Self-Service: This is where the user independently interacts with the product, which includes:

• Signup: Users initiate their journey with the product without sales intervention.

• Try: Prospects explore the product's features and capabilities on their own.

• Activate: Users reach a level of engagement where they realize the product's value.

• Buy: The decision to purchase is made based on the product experience.

Pricing Plans: An area shared by both PLG and SLG, it allows users to select the best plan for their needs, sometimes leading to a sales interaction for more complex or enterprise-level packages.

PLS Signals: Product-led sales signals where user behavior indicates potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities, guiding the sales team on when to engage.

We initiated our exploration with "PLG vs Self-Service: Is there a difference?" and now conclude with the equation "P = S + X," affirming that while Self-Service is integral to PLG, it's the strategic 'X' factors that amplify and differentiate the growth journey.

Tenant Management forms a crucial bridge between seamless user experiences and the efficient functioning of your application. In our previous blog, we delved into the significance of user transitions. In this installment, we explore the intricate relationship between these transitions and the concept of tenants in a SaaS ecosystem.

Welcome to the world where each customer is more than just a user; they're a tenant in your application. It ensures that each customer using the SaaS application has their own private and secure space within the system, allowing them to customize and use the software independently without interfering with other customers' data and settings. This approach allows SaaS providers to serve a large number of customers simultaneously while maintaining a high level of security and scalability.

Tenant Management is difficult for PLG products

In the early days of their product’s PLG journey, most SaaS products saw a drop-off of ~98% of users. Cloud computing costs went through the roof as each signup spun off a heavy backend tenant infrastructure  

- 85% of SaaS Builders surveyed (n=75) reported tooling and technologies not available for PLG self-serve

Largely speaking, there are 3 tenancy models. Single Tenant, Mixed Tenant, and Multi-Tenant. When it comes to scalable SaaS products, most startups choose a multi-tenant architecture. The tenant lifecycle in the context of a SaaS platform refers to the various stages that a customer (tenant) goes through during their journey with the platform.

Let's explain each stage:

End User Service Agreement (EUSA)

When implementing a self-serve model, the EUSA is often presented to users during the signup or registration process. This is the initial phase where the potential customer reviews and accepts the End-User Service Agreement or Terms of Service provided by the SaaS platform. It outlines the contractual terms, conditions, and rules under which the customer will use the platform. Users agree to it during signup, ensuring a clear and trustworthy relationship between both the service provider and the end-users

Tenant Creation

After accepting the EUSA, the customer (tenant) creates an account on the SaaS platform. During this phase, the customer provides the necessary information, such as name, email, company details, etc., to set up their unique tenant account.

Tenant Waitlist

In certain scenarios, a SaaS platform may experience high demand, and resources might be limited. In such cases, the platform may implement a waitlist for new customers who want to sign up. The waitlist ensures a fair and organized onboarding process, allowing the platform to manage the influx of new tenants effectively.

Tenant Enrichment (aka Segmentation)

Once the tenant account is created, the SaaS platform may collect additional information about the customer, such as firmographic Company information, and/or industry-specific data. This data helps enrich the customer profile and allows the platform to segment customers based on specific characteristics. Imagine attributes like - Industry vertical, Number of employees, HQ location, Publicly listed/Private, Website, Twitter/LinkedIn handle, etc.

Tenant Transition

Tenant Transitions are defined as the changes of state affected by changes due to Pricing Plans, and adding/removing Business units. Successfully managing tenant transitions ensures that as your users' needs evolve, your SaaS product can adapt and scale to accommodate these changes seamlessly.

But what makes this transition even smoother and more efficient?

In the PLG world, life of a Tenant should generally starts small, changes its shape and form (e.g. additional access & features) and can be acquire/merge with other Tenants to represent a large Customer.

e.g. Think that a BU within General Electric bought a SaaS product, and then later on it gets viral and deployed to other BUs.

The answer lies in the strategic implementation of micro tenants.

Designing with micro-tenants can simplify tenant transitions. Whether users are moving from individual accounts to team-based settings or scaling up to enterprise-level configurations, tenant transitions allow for a tailored, personalized experience at every step.

Dunning

In the SaaS context, dunning refers to the process of managing failed or overdue payments from customers. SaaS platforms typically handle this by sending automated notifications to customers about payment failures, reminding them to update their billing information, or resolving any issues with their subscriptions.

Clean Up

Over time, customer data may become unnecessary to hold and needs to be deleted. e.g. Free Trial ended and the customer dropped off usage, Paid customers may have churned (canceled/discontinued their subscriptions). The clean-up stage involves regularly reviewing and managing the tenants, removing inactive or canceled accounts, deleting associated users, notifying admins as necessary, and updating relevant records to keep the platform's data accurate and up-to-date.

Engagement lifecycle Initiation

The engagement lifecycle within the tenant lifecycle typically begins once the tenant has completed the initial onboarding and activation stages. While the tenant lifecycle generally encompasses all stages from the initial sign-up to the continued use or churn of a customer, the engagement lifecycle focuses on the ongoing interactions and experiences that drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and value realization

But there's more to this story, and we're excited to announce that our next blog will be entirely dedicated to dissecting the intricacies of the Engagement Lifecycle.

Related :

In today's digital landscape, user lifecycle management is essential for businesses seeking to engage and retain customers effectively. It encompasses a series of stages that users go through, from initial authentication to continuous enrichment and personalized experiences.

Our previous article explored self-service product development for Product-Led Growth (PLG). We encourage you to revisit our previous blog to refresh your memory on the broader context of self-service implementation. In this blog, let's delve deeper into one critical factor - the User Lifecycle and its significance in building a thriving user base.

User Management (Authentication, Registration, Authorization)

User management is the cornerstone of the user lifecycle. It begins with authentication, where users verify their identity to access your platform. Registration allows users to create accounts with necessary details. Authorization grants varying levels of access to ensure data security.

User Waitlists

Implementing user waitlists can create a sense of exclusivity and anticipation for new products or services. It allows interested users to sign up in advance, and as soon as the product becomes available, they are notified and granted access. This strategy can also help gauge interest and demand before the official launch.

Onboarding / Activation

User activation is defined as the act of guiding users from signup to product usage through Setup, Aha, and Habit moments.

An efficient onboarding process involves providing tutorials, walkthroughs, and personalized guidance to help users understand the platform's features and benefits. A smooth onboarding experience increases user satisfaction and reduces early churn.

User-Initiated Invitations

Empower users to invite friends or colleagues to join your platform. The "Invite Friends" or "Refer a Friend" feature fosters virality, driving user acquisition through word-of-mouth.

User Enrichment

Collect and leverage user data for personalized experiences. Continuously enriching user profiles helps refine marketing strategies and tailor offerings. A valuable resource for understanding user behavior and preferences.

User Journey (Moments)

By mapping user moments - from their first login to regular usage patterns—you can optimize these interactions for a seamless and enjoyable user experience.

Dunning & Cleanup

Churn is inevitable in any user base. Implementing dunning processes, which involve managing failed payments and subscription renewals, can help reduce involuntary churn. Periodic cleanup maintains a healthy user community.

Furthermore, alongside these, let's delve into a few additional considerations.👇🏻

Profile & Preferences

Allowing users to customize their profiles and set preferences enhances the user experience. By enabling users to personalize their accounts, you can deliver targeted content, recommendations, and notifications based on their interests and behaviours.

Customer Portal (Admin Pages)

A well-designed customer portal or admin page provides users with a centralized hub to manage their accounts, access support, and review relevant information. Pre-built features simplify administrative tasks.

Credential Management

User credential management allow users to modify account settings, fostering a sense of control. Utilizing encryption, multi-factor authentication, and other security measures can prevent unauthorised access.

Enterprise SSO / SCIM Integrations

For business-oriented platforms, integrating with Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions and System for Cross-Domain Identity Management (SCIM) protocols simplifies user access and account management for enterprise clients.

Notifications

Keeping users informed and engaged is key to retaining their interest. Welcoming emails and internal notifications signal a warm reception for new users. These thoughtful touches improve user onboarding.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, mastering user lifecycle management leads to lasting relationships, brand loyalty, and sustainable growth. Stay focused on delivering exceptional user experiences and continuously iterate your strategies based on user feedback and evolving market trends.

In a world where customers value autonomy and convenience, building a self-service product has become a crucial aspect of business success. The ability to empower users to explore and adopt products independently can significantly impact growth and customer satisfaction. However, creating an effective self-service experience requires careful planning and a focus on user needs.

In our previous blog - 💡Self-Serve Your Way to PLG Success, we delved into the concept of Product-Led Growth (PLG) and its rising prominence among B2B companies. Having gained insights into the importance of enabling your product with self-service capabilities, it's time to explore the vital considerations in building a powerful Self-Service product.

In this continuation, we will briefly touch upon each consideration, providing a glimpse into the product features that harmoniously work together to contribute to a thriving self-service experience.

These considerations become the basis of enabling self-service for your SaaS product.

1. User Lifecycle

2. Tenant Lifecycle

3. Engagement Lifecycle

4. Pricing Lifecycle

User Lifecycle

The User Lifecycle is the journey that each user takes from the moment they discover the SaaS platform to becoming a loyal advocate, ensuring a seamless user experience.

• It begins with attracting users through a seamless sign-up process (manage authentication, registration, and authorization) and enticing them with free trials to experience the value offered.

• The focus then shifts to activation, where one ensures users quickly grasp the core features and benefits of the platform.

• The retention phase comes next, where one engages users with personalized content and timely notifications, keeping them satisfied and committed to the platform.

• Finally, users are encouraged to become advocates, spreading the word and referring others.

In our next blog, we'll explore each aspect in depth, delivering insights for an exceptional user experience.

Tenant Lifecycle

In a SaaS model, customers are like tenants of the application. With a PLG approach, their journey is similar to renting a property, just a tad more prominent than an SLG tenant management approach.

• When a property manager receives too many rental requests, beyond its capacity to handle, some customers get put on the waitlist (Tenant Waitlist)

• As tenants move in, they have to agree to platform rules and an account creation ensues (signing EUSA and Tenant creation). The platform collects information and groups it based on similarities (Enrichment and Segmentation).

• Depending on the marketing channels the customer arrives from, systems tag Tenants with attributes necessary for Marketing/Growth teams to further analyze campaign success paths (Tenant Attribution).

• As tenants continue using the property, there will be times when tenants might decide to upgrade, stay, or leave (Tenant Transitions). Payment issues are handled across the transitions.

• When a subscriber fails payment for a set period of time, systems generally lock down access to tenants, while allowing users to download their usage data - specially important for regulated industries/GDPR compliance (Dunning)

• Furthermore, if the customer churns, plans expire and customers show no interest in your product, tenant deletion gets initiated, and all customer data is cleaned up (cleaning up/archived).

Find more in-depth insights in a separate blog.

Engagement Lifecycle

The Engagement Lifecycle ensures that users are actively involved with the platform during their user journey. Following are a few approaches to deliver a seamless user experience.

• Interactive onboarding experiences make users feel at ease and confident from the beginning.

• Personalized content and notifications cater to individual needs.

• Proactive support through in-app chat ensures quick issue resolution, leading to enhanced user satisfaction.

The upcoming blog will delve into engagement lifecycle strategies, highlighting how exceptional user experiences are delivered.

Pricing Lifecycle

The Pricing Lifecycle plays a vital role in aligning the value offered with the investment users make. The platform should adopt various strategies including value-based pricing, ensuring users receive the most from their subscriptions. Free trials and freemium versions allow users to explore risk-free before committing. Upselling and cross-selling opportunities should be explored to enhance the user experience. Regular pricing iterations should be implemented to remain competitive and responsive to market dynamics.

In a dedicated blog, we will talk more about how pricing is optimized for maximum value and customer satisfaction.

Final Thoughts

Each factor, from user and tenant engagement to pricing lifecycle strategies, contributes to an exceptional user experience. By embracing PLG and providing self-service capabilities, SaaS builders can achieve higher adoption and customer advocacy.

Stay tuned for more insights in our upcoming blogs. Happy building!

Why the blog post?  

Welcome to our exclusive series of blogs explicitly tailored to provide PLG implementation guidance to Product and technology Leaders, SaaS Architects, and Developers. While there is a plethora of resources available for GTM leaders and Product Managers, we've uncovered a gaping void in the realm of support and guidance for implementing PLG.

Our mission is clear: to equip you with the necessary architectural decisions, product capabilities, and the tools and technologies needed to build self-service within your product. 

This is just the beginning – the first installment in a comprehensive series that will revolutionize your approach to growth.  

Why has PLG emerged as the new norm for B2B SaaS companies? 

2023 has marked a significant turning point for the tech industry, signaling the end of the "Growth at all costs" era and ushering in profitability's (re)emergence. Alongside this shift, we have witnessed the identification of key factors contributing to startup failures and struggles. 

According to the CB Insights report: Why startups fail', two primary culprits stand out: 

• Running out of cash, accounting for 38% of failures. 

• Lack of market need, responsible for 35% of startup setbacks. 

 
Product-led growth (PLG) allows for mitigating a few of these failure points. Here’s Openview’s take on the business benefits of PLG

Refer to some of the following reports to get yourself up to speed on the business trends.

• Battery Ventures: OpenCloud Report  

• OpenView: Age of Connected Work  

• BVP: PLG Trends 

• Gartner: 72% of buyers want a rep-free experience 

• OpenView: Why is PLG here to stay 

Why should your B2B product start with self-serve? 

First and foremost, let's start by understanding what self-serve means in the context of SaaS before delving into how it facilitates Product-Led Growth (PLG). 

What is SaaS Self-Service? 

A self-serve PLG experience allows users to sign up, try the product, and gain value from it without requiring onboarding or interaction from the company's sales or customer success team. 

Let's face it, B2C products like cars, Spotify, Netflix, and the never-ending list have nailed the art of try-before-buy. But hold up, why have B2B products been so slow to catch on? 

Enter the big guns of cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Digital Ocean. These pioneers have embraced the bottom-up approach, letting developers try out various products (open-source, cloud offerings, you name it) with a simple signup. They've shown us the way! 

Now, it's time for B2B products to take a page from their playbook and realize the game-changing benefits of Product-Led Growth (PLG). We tapped into the wisdom of ChatGPT to give us the lowdown on those benefits. 

Here's what we've got: 

It's time to bring the try-before-buy phenomenon to the B2B world and make some serious waves.  

Self-Service significantly improves TTV and TTR vs. SLG-based product

When discussing PLG (Product-Led Growth), it is essential to include the comparison with SLG (Sales-Led Growth) to highlight the different strategies. It approaches organizations use for business growth and customer acquisition. This comparison allows businesses to evaluate whether adopting a PLG model would be more effective in achieving sustainable growth and improving customer experiences.

PLG: Empowers end-users to self-service products with autonomy, driving rapid growth through word-of-mouth.

SLG: Empowers sales teams to personalize experiences and tailor value-prop conversations.

Let’s see how

Witness the discernible contrast in Time To Value(TTV), where the Self-Serve (PLG) approach swiftly initiates within a mere 30 days, accompanied by nominal initial payments, aka Time To Revenue (TTR). In stark comparison, the conventional SLG conversion cycle prolongs over 6 months, with usage potentially commencing after an extensive 9+ month period.

According to Gartner, more than 72% of buyers prefer a self-service approach over traditional sales motions, as it enables faster time-to-value (TTV) and eliminates the need for direct representation.

We will explore their differences at a larger level in upcoming blogs.

By now, we have witnessed how PLG is becoming the norm for B2B companies, thanks to its user-friendly approach, viral growth potential, lower customer acquisition costs, faster time-to-value, scalability, and data-driven decision-making.

This is the first installment in the comprehensive series. In the upcoming blogs, we will delve into considerations for building your Self-Service product and each capability in detail, providing valuable insights for successful implementation.