Exploring the World of Product-Led Growth with Sam Richard

The Business of Open Source

Sam Richard, Head of Growth at ngrok, joins me to talk about product-led growth in open source and ngrok’s history in open source.

In this episode, Sam and I discuss product-led growth - how it differs from a traditional sales model, what metrics founders can use to track their development, and how to find your activation metrics. We also review what kind of companies would benefit from a product-led approach, who might not, and how companies can avoid mistakes others have made in implementing the strategy.

Highlights:

• Sam introduces herself and shares her definition of product-led growth (0:45)
• Traditional metrics vs. product-led metrics (8:53)
• How product-led growth evolves once a company moves past the early stages (13:12)
• What kind of companies or founders product led growth is appropriate for (14:54)
• Sam and Emily explore questions about products that buyers love, but users hate (19:53)
• Moving from product-led growth to a sales-led model (21:15)
• Sam reviews ngrok’s moves from open source to closed source and back (23:57)

Links:

Sam

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-crowell-richard/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamCRichard
• Company: https://ngrok.com/
• productbenchmarks.com