We’re often asked “How do we become PLG?” While there is no one way to PLG, we have accumulated a number of principles below to guide entrepreneurs. Building upon our inaugural post on what is PLG, we are launching our PLG principles for the Age of Connected Work. Public company PLG leaders like Datadog, Snowflake and HubSpot have adopted at least nine of the principles and are rewarded with outsized valuations–more on that later. You don’t need to adopt all 11 principles to be PLG, but use as many as are applicable for your market to build a defensible competitive advantage for your business and win in the long-term. Start by embracing the Build principles; otherwise you’ll be optimizing from a shaky foundation. Then layer on Deliver and Monetize principles to amplify your efforts. Read more at https://openviewpartners.com/blog/age-of-connected-work/

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11 PRINCIPLES FOR THE AGE OF CONNECTED WORK
10
11
BUILD FOR THE END USER
BUILD TO BE DISCOVERED
BUILD TO MEET YOUR USERS
WHERE THEY WORK
3
BUILD FOR OPENNESS
BUILD FOR FLEXIBILITY
BUILD COMMUNITY AS A
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
6
DELIVER INSTANT
PRODUCT VALUE
7
DELIVER INSTANT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
8
MONETIZE AFTER
YOU DELIVER VALUE
9
MONETIZE BASED ON USAGE
MONETIZE BEYOND SOFTWARE
= NEW PRINCIPLE

2. The most well-loved software
puts the needs of end users first.
As a builder, it's about listening to your customers,
showing empathy for their unique challenges,
offering a solution that's approachable, and
instilling this philosophy in your company culture.
Enduring product-led growth companies
bake this into their core DNA.
"
"
Tope Awotona
FOUNDER & CEO
BUILD FOR THE END USER
PLG PRINCIPLE #1

3. When you’re building a company, the first
thing you need to do is figure out where
your customers are hanging out.
It’s meeting them where they are at. Do they go to
industry events? Are there communities where they
hang out? You’ve got to identify where those core
customers are spending their time and use this to
inform your decisions.
"
"
Wade Foster
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
BUILD TO BE DISCOVERED
PLG PRINCIPLE #2

4. People around the world are extremely busy
every single day. Instead of asking them to
set aside dedicated time to engage with our
product, we intentionally meet them where
they already are by laying on top of existing
behaviors like browsing the web.
By doing this, we’ve been able to help our learners
consistently work towards their goal of acquiring a
new language and further propelling us on our
mission to make the world multilingual.
"
"
Taylor Neiman
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
BUILD TO MEET YOUR USERS
WHERE THEY WORK
PLG PRINCIPLE #3

5. In the digital first era the best customer
experiences are composable.
Winning companies know that they need open, API-
first platforms that make it easy to build those
experiences quickly.
"
" Steve Sloan
CEO
BUILD FOR OPENNESS
PLG PRINCIPLE #4

6. The opportunity to change the way hundreds
of millions of people work and empower all of
these creators in the world to build useful
applications and share those with other users
— this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
"
"
Howie Liu
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
BUILD FOR FLEXIBILITY
PLG PRINCIPLE #5

7. The day before we allowed our beta users to sign up
for the product, we decided it would be great for our
users to have a community for each other. Discourse
had just come up so we spun up a Discourse account
and made a completely open source forum.
While community was a last-minute addition,
it’s now a critical pillar in Webflow’s growth.
"
"
Bryant Chou
CO-FOUNDER
BUILD COMMUNITY AS A
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
PLG PRINCIPLE #6

8. HubSpot started with a rep-driven model and then
shifted to a freemium model with product-led growth.
This move made sense for us.
HubSpot was founded on the philosophy that
you have to provide value to customers
before you can extract it. Our north star has
always been to solve for the customer.
"
"
Yamini Rangan
CEO
DELIVER INSTANT PRODUCT VALUE
PLG PRINCIPLE #7

9. Customer experience is everything. It starts with
having a product that customers' love and then
having the right processes and people to guide their
success across the entire customer journey.
I always tell my team,
‘We all own the customer experience.’
"
"
Peter McKay
CEO
DELIVER INSTANT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
PLG PRINCIPLE #8

10. One of our early design characteristics was that we wanted
potential customers to be able to test and use JumpCloud
easily without the burden of a specific time commitment.
From the very beginning we let customers use all premium
features for free, for up to ten users and ten devices,
without a cut off date or any strings attached.
It was critical for that initial experience with
JumpCloud to be frictionless, and for customers
|to clearly see they were getting tremendous
value for what they might end up paying for.
"
"
Rajat Bhargava
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
MONETIZE AFTER
YOU DELIVER VALUE
PLG PRINCIPLE #9

11. If you are not using a usage-based pricing model
and are relying on a flat fee, it’s incredibly
challenging to know what is driving customers.
The insight you get from a usage-based model drives
customer engagement, value, and retention. This not only
allows for a better customer experience but also informs
a better roadmap.
"
"
Bernadette Nixon
CEO
MONETIZE BASED ON USAGE
PLG PRINCIPLE #10

12. Our mission is to empower the restaurant community
to delight their guests, do what they love, and thrive.
Ultimately, this means building an end-to-end platform
that helps a restaurant grow their revenue, streamline
operations, and drive amazing guest experiences.
It also includes going beyond software and into
financial technology solutions like Toast Capital,
which can deliver fast, flexible funding to
restaurants to help them expand their operations.
"
"
Chris Comparato
CEO
MONETIZE BEYOND SOFTWARE
PLG PRINCIPLE #11

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BUILD FOR THE END USER
11 PLG PRINCIPLES
FOR THE AGE OF CONNECTED WORK