Practical tips to scale smarter with product-led growth

Every Sunday morning, you'll get 1 actionable deep dive to build & scale your product-led business in under 5 minutes.

We reverse engineer how companies scale from 0 → $100M+ ARR.

  • Genspark → $155M in 10 months
  • Netlify → Became the obvious choice

You get the playbook.

Trusted by 60,000+ SaaS founders

Key Takeaways

  • ProductLed's mission is to make software accessible by helping businesses offer products that are free (at least in part), simple to use, and value-forward before purchase.
  • Being product-led is both a go-to-market strategy and an organizational mindset where end-user success drives business success.
  • Product-led companies reduce buying friction through "try before you buy" experiences (free trial or freemium) and win by ensuring users achieve outcomes inside the product.
  • ProductLed primarily serves software companies that have customers, are past product-market fit, and are committed to improving user success.
  • Core values emphasize user success, simplicity, continuous improvement, outsized impact, and long-term integrity.
  • ProductLed's origin story centers on shifting from lead-generation playbooks to a product-led approach that scaled via free trial and freemium adoption.

Vision

At ProductLed, our mission is to make software accessible to everyone.

Why we’re here

We empower software businesses to make their products free, accessible, and simple-to-use through our all-in-one education platform.

We believe businesses that thrive in today’s marketplace, need to win their market, users, and customers over by crafting delightful and valuable product experiences.

What does it mean to be product-led?

Being “product-led” is many things. It’s a go-to-market strategy. It’s a mindset shift. It’s a philosophy. It’s a methodology. It’s an approach to doing business.

At its core, being “product-led” comes down to one main concept: your end-users success ultimately becomes your success.

Product-led businesses flip this approach. They focus on serving before selling by giving you access to a free part of their product.

Take Zoom for example. If you sign up for the free version and run into obstacles adding a colleague to your video chat, chances are you’ll never return.

But if you have an incredible experience, you’ll most likely continue using it. One day, you decide it’s worth paying for to access new features.

Thanks to a free trial and/or freemium models, anyone can “try before they buy.” But to ultimately make a sale, businesses need to help their users be successful.

Product-led companies live and die by user success.

Who we serve

We truly believe that any business can be product-led. But we’re focused on helping software businesses because we know them inside and out.

That said, not every software company is a good fit to work with us.

We work with software companies who:

  • Are committed to helping their users become successful.
  • Have an existing business with customers.
  • Are past the product-market fit stage.
  • Are already AMAZING at helping their customers but want to get better at it.
  • Are hungry for serious growth.
  • Are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work to achieve the success they desire.

What We Value

Our Core Values

Empower others

User success is the #1 priority. When our users succeed, we succeed.

Make complex things simple

Simplicity trumps complexity. Aim to be the best at whatever you put your mind to. A good job is its own reward.

Be better every day

You maintain a high bar for yourself and the people you work with. You get better every day.

Make a crazy, big impact

You set crazy big goals and make them happen. You prioritize based on what’s going to drive the most value for the user and the business.

Be a good human

Always play the long game. Do what’s right. Sacrifice short-term gains for long-term gains.

How It All Started

Hey, I’m Wes Bush.

I’m the founder of ProductLed. Back in 2015, I was hired to help a small, but quickly growing B2B software company generate leads for their sales team. I tried every proven playbook I could get my hands on: Facebook ads, Google ads, content syndication, emails swaps, promoting whitepapers through email partners... you name it. I was obsessed with generating leads for our sales team.

But after spending a small fortune, I’d always return to the sales team to ask them the same question about leads: were they good?

I kept hearing these “leads” didn’t have any interest whatsoever in talking with sales. So I asked myself, “is there a better way for us to sell our product?”

I thought back to the way I liked to buy software. Typically, I never even bothered talking with a sales team. I’d sign up for a free trial, use the product, and if I liked it I’d simply pay for it without a second thought.

Later in 2016, we launched a free trial. It had a lackluster performance since we didn’t know what we were doing. But later in that year, we launched a freemium product and more than 100k users signed up for it in less than 12 months.

Since then, I’ve helped thousands of organizations build and grow successful product-led businesses.

And it’s our mission to help you do the same.