A session at SaaSBOOMi Annual 23

1. PLG
100% PLG, 13 USD/mo AOV.
70K+ paid Subs and millions of free users from 195+ countries
Sanket Shah
Co-founder & CEO at InVideo
A video creation software

2. What is product led growth?
“Product led growth is a business strategy where your product is the protagonist
in the story of how you acquire, activate, engage, convert & expand your
customers.”
PLG is a company wide strategy where you build all the functions and culture to align with this strategy.
Clarity is key.
If you have to take away one thing from today's conversation it's this - PLG is all about optimizing time to
value.

5. Learnings from 4+ years
of PLG @ InVideo
① When does PLG make sense
Opinion
② Jobs to be done + Segmentation
Strategy
③ GTM, Customer Support
Gratification

6. When does PLG make sense?
✅ Extremely large market
✅ When products can be self-serve
✅ Entry price is low enough that it can be an individual's/small teams decision. Usually,
businesses can’t make a purchase decision of $1K/mo + without buy-in. However, if you
start small, and have growth loops, you can expand to grow to $1k+ eg: Notion, Linear
✅ Market can be captured faster via PLG than sales
✅ Cheap + deep channels are available to acquire - WOM, SEO, Loops etc etc.
✅ Category is well understood and purchase usually decisions are reversible
Examples: Loom, Notion, Canva, Gmail, Linear, InVideo etc. etc.

7. InVideo’s enterprise to prosumer pivot
InVideo first started selling to enterprises
We pivoted 20 months into the journey

8. PLG @ InVideo
✅ Video creation is a winner takes most market (eg: FCP, After effects)
✅ Extremely large market where the decision maker is an individual
✅ Buying pattern -> User after using the product decides to buy, decision is
not on their boss or anyone else
✅ Cheap + deep acquisition channels are available
✅ The value we create for a buyer can never justify the cost of a sales team
- For eg: if we use sales teams, we need to sell for $1k/mo and it does not
justify the cost of purchase. There are alternatives

9. When does PLG not make sense
❌ Requires multi-people buy in - Example: Workday, Rippling
❌ Targeted medium-large ticket size buyer persona is available
❌ There are complex integrations - that might need a solutions architect
❌ It needs consultative sales
❌ Success takes time

10. How the PLG funnel usually looks like? (best in class)
VISITORS
15-20% SIGN UP
30-35% ACTIVATE
1-4% CONVERSION RATE

12. Jobs To Be Done:

13. User interview can look like this
After you have taken notes
SETUP
● Freelance graphic designer, now
doing video / video ads for clients.
● Started doing video after seeing
lots on TikTok and Instagram.
● First video shot on iPhone for auto
body shop/car detailing.
#3 HUGO

14. User interview can look like this
PUSHES
● When short video content is
becoming more relevant for
ads for my clients
● When I'm a freelancer
● When I see TikTok and
Instagram are becoming
more popular for ads
● When I'm looking for new
business opportunities
PULLS
● So I can add more services to
my freelance business
● So I can create more
continuous work from my
existing clients
● So I can help my clients sell
more
● So I can offer more services to
each client
ANXIETIES
● How professional does it have
to look?
● Do I need more equipment?
● Will it take a long time to
learn?
OBSERVATIONS
● Templates helped save time
● Found InVideo useful for short 30 second ads (longer form videos better in Premier Pro)
● Wants to use existing resources (iPhone, drone)
● Only offers video to clients who are already engaged in social media ads
● Only interested in creative - trying to offload video editing responsibilities to others

15. Arriving at JTBD:
✅ 15 user interviews with people who have recently bought your product – It is
not a repeat purchase – 3 different type of personas * 5 interviews each
✅ Interview methodology
✅ Framework is simple - Think of the process as, someone is ‘HIRING’ your
product to do a job - What is the job?
✅ You want to find out: Understanding customers context, what were the
struggling moments, push & pull, anxiety & habits, desired outcomes, hire &
fire criteria and trade offs
✅ Arriving at 2-4 JTBD

16. Understanding
JTBD gives you:
✅ Positioning
✅ GTM ideas
✅ Informs product strategy
✅ Segmentation
✅ Common vocabulary
✅ Purchase process & timelines

17. Examples
“With no prior experience in
video, it was all just too
overwhelming. I couldn’t figure
out how to put together a very
simple video.”
“I’m going to be left behind or
fired if I don’t update my skills
and approach to marketing”
“So we look legitimate or more
legitimate as a business.”

18. InVideo’s point of failure & JTBD changed it
✅ We got 25% of advanced users – Users who used Adobe
products etc.
✅ In our user interviews, they expressed their desire to use
advanced features because they used InVideo alongside Adobe
products
✅ We build the advanced features like color correction, key frames
etc.
😑 Got no results – Why?

19. Because they used us for:
WHAT WE HEAR WHEN HIRING
"I was spending hours each day just to
produce one finished video. I was
falling behind and needed a way to
speed up the process."
"I'm not a novice when it comes to
making videos and have a specific
idea of how I'd like them to turn out. I
need a tool that doesn't get in the way
of my
vision."
KEY TRADE OFFS
● Willing to use a "less advanced"
tool in order to go faster
● Willing to sacrifice certain
features rather than be slowed
down
● Willing to pay more if tool fits
into their established workflow

20. Downside at InVideo
😑 We hurt our positioning – Easy or advanced?
😑 We hurt 75% of non pro users
😑 We hurt all the pro users
😑 Spent so much org bandwidth for underwhelming
outcomes

21. Example of JTBD done well:

22. Homework:

23. Segmentation
Video
Text
Sync Async
© Shreyas Doshi

24. Segmentation
Video
Text
Sync Async
Zoom
Slack
Loom
Email GDocs
© Shreyas Doshi

25. Segmentation
Self-
serve
Sold
Customer
comms
Internal
comms
Hybrid/
Remote
Office-
only
© Shreyas Doshi

26. Segmentation
Self-
serve
Sold
Customer
comms
Internal
comms
Hybrid/
Remote
Office-
only
2
3
1
X
© Shreyas Doshi

27. Segmentation
✅ Reachable
✅ Consistent needs
✅ Prioritizable
✅ Winnable
© Shreyas Doshi

28. Product + Analytics
Visitor to Sign Up:
JTBD and Segmentation derives the signup funnel -> User testing is one of the
best tools to not make basic mistakes
A good funnel discourages non-target segments to sign up while encouraging
target segments to sign up
Bad segments create confusing product loops -> Everyone cannot be our user
VISITORS → 15-20% SIGN UP → 30-35% ACTIVATE → 2-2.5% CONVERSION
RATE → 0.3-0.5% LONG TERM CUSTOMERS

29. Sign Up -> Activation
● Activation is when a user experiences the core value prop – For
us it is downloading the first video
● It is a mathematical formula tied to habit
● Activation should be common vocabulary across org – A metric
that is easy to speak and communicate

30. Activation to Habit
Habit is the movement in which – If a user reaches there, the
retention curve no longer deteriorates
Check for trends where users retain, find a common usage number
beyond which users do not leave you and that becomes habit
Activation is back calculated from habit - If a user hits a particular
point that can take them to Habit, it becomes activation

31. Product + Analytics
✅ No feature creep - have to be careful - It’s not an enterprise
product. For every upsell via feature building, you compromise
activation
✅ No bugs. Performance is a feature. Remember there is no
customer success team.
✅ Activation is not an afterthought. The product, the landing page -
> everything is built while keeping activation in mind
✅ Cannot do PLG and Enterprise ;) One thing takes priority and
everything else is compromised for that

32. How to get to first 10K users: 100% gratification
We are SEO champs, but there is other full session going on SEO

33. YouTube + Udemy etc.
✅ Go to influencers who are in your niche - Remember,
segmentation is necessary before you do this
✅ YT is the 2nd largest search engine in the world, go to the creator
who is ranking for a particular KW and partner with them on fixed fee
+ affiliate
✅ Create Udemy courses and so on…
✅ This alone can get you first 500-10000 users in most domains

34. AppSumo
If you are in 0 to 1 state -> Don't bother · if Appsumo is suitable for your
product · just do it · InVideo has made over 600K USD via AppSumo in our
payout. Total sales are over $1.5M

35. AppSumo
✅ Learn
✅ Iterate
✅ Make a funnel to convert lifetime into subscription - 5% will
✅ Push AppSumo to promote you
✅ Check for PMF

36. How we built our customer support team
✅ 24*7 support that replies in a minute - Only chat
✅ Insights go back to product team, all stacked rank
✅ Support team’s job is to help and sales is simply the by product
What do you get
✅ A revenue engine
✅ Review engine
✅ Customer love

37. What do we care about
✅ CSAT
✅ Sales - However, sales slabs are
based on CSAT and not on revenue
number
✅ Culture is to go above and
beyond to help
✅ Daily slack reporting for each
individual shifts

38. 💡Creativity: Stripe failed payments connected via Zapier and notification in slack
and a chat push is triggered via chat tool
Use chat popups at the right time, targeted to the right user using onboarding data
Chat assisted help for everything
Customer support revenue

39. Product help · Bugs · Feature request · UX gaps
How we build tags and then bifurcate

41. Product help:
My projects – 6.9%
Feature request
editor:
Canvas – 17.1%
Feature request
editor:
Left panel – 10.9%

42. Common Saas myths might not be for PLG
👉 Quick ratio -> Churn - Quick ratio = how many users can you acquire:
users you lose. Because churn compounds. Ideal ratio for growth is 3:1
👉 Canva operated at a 8% monthly churn and hit 1.2B ARR -> It comes
down to understanding of natural usage frequency
👉 Once you have a large market share, going after orgs with a sales team
will be important (We have not tried it yet)
👉 Just make the price double ;)

43. Different type of product led motions
👉 Pure born PLG companies - InVideo, Canva
👉 PLG for adoption and conversion, with sales for enterprise growth -
Figma, Miro, Zapier
👉 Slightly interesting PLG are companies like Datadog

44. Special Thanks
👉 Rishen from Toplyne -> A plg startup that helps you monetize
👉 Shreyas Doshi -> Product leader who has had a great influence on me
and I am also using a lot of his content

45. Please give me
your feedback