Product-led growth (PLG)
A growth model where people try, adopt, share, and expand through the product itself before or alongside talking to sales.
See it
What it is
Product-led growth makes product use the main engine of acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion. People can reach value before a sales conversation, then usage, collaboration, limits, or new needs create the reason to invite teammates or pay. Slack, Dropbox, and Calendly are familiar examples of products that spread through use. OpenView Venture Partners coined the phrase in 2016 to name what those companies were already doing.
Reach for PLG when one person or a small team can start safely, reach a useful outcome quickly, and adopt from the bottom up. The work is not just adding a free plan: it is shortening time to first value, making the next useful action obvious, and connecting upgrade moments to value the user has already experienced.
Gotcha: product-led does not mean sales-free, support-free, or marketing-free. Complex procurement and large rollouts may still need people. If onboarding never reaches value, a freemium tier only creates a larger pool of inactive accounts.
Ask AI for it
Design a product-led growth flow for [product] and [target user]. Define one measurable activation event and the shortest path from signup to that value moment. Then build the onboarding checklist, empty states, one collaboration or sharing loop, and a contextual upgrade moment triggered only after demonstrated value. Instrument the path in PostHog as signup completed, activation completed, invite sent, teammate activated, limit reached, upgrade viewed, and subscription started. Return the screens, copy, event plan, experiment plan, and guardrail metrics for retention and support load. Do not add a paywall before the activation event.