In this episode of ThriveCast, we speak with Sanjay Sarathy, VP of Self-Serve and Developer Experience at Cloudinary. Sanjay shares Cloudinary’s journey from a developer consulting firm to one of the most successful product-led growth stories in SaaS—scaling past $100M ARR while maintaining a strong self-serve engine and developer trust
Key Insights
Cloudinary started as a consulting company before productizing a repeated developer pain
Developers were treated as the core growth channel, not just users
Early investment in developer support and documentation drove trust and word of mouth
Self-serve and enterprise were built as a continuum, not competing motions
Freemium created value first, revenue followed naturally
Word of mouth still drives a significant share of daily signups at scale
Simplifying signup and activation had outsized impact on growth
Not all product launches succeed, fast failure led to better product strategy
Actionable Takeaways
Treat your primary user persona as a growth engine, not a funnel step
Invest early in support, docs, and activation, not just sales
Let self-serve usage reveal future enterprise opportunities
Reduce friction relentlessly small changes compound at scale
Separate product experimentation from core revenue products
Build trust first; monetization follows naturally
Resources Mentioned
Cloudinary self-serve and freemium model
Developer documentation and SDK-first onboarding
Activation and signup flow experiments
Product incubation model for new bets
If you’re a B2B SaaS founder, PLG leader, or developer-focused product team, this episode shows that sustainable growth doesn’t come from aggressive selling it comes from earning trust, removing friction, and letting value scale naturally across self-serve and enterprise journeys.
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