Sam Crowell Richard’s Post

Into product-led sales? I'm building a mean team ngrok. Check out the opening here: https://lnkd.in/eyVHiHgt

The classic subscription vs. usage based argument is starting up again on hacker news. My take? At least for developers.... If you're selling a utility or tool that people use consistently outside of infrastructure, you've got a subscription product. (Developer productivity, hiring tests, etc) If you want people to adopt your tool as infrastructure in production code, you need to start with usage based. (CI/CD tools, Logging, etc) Here's the catch--If you "make it big" and make it into true production infrastructure within a company at scale, procurement/finance are going to want predictability and a monthly/annual line item, so you become a subscription again. That's showbiz baby. *Jazzhands*

Some Career Cheat Codes: -Apologize and own it if you make a mistake -Come back with data and stats after you've launched something, even if it fails -Bring ideas for solutions when you bring up problems What did I miss?

It feels like its been a lifetime but its been exactly one year since I brought on my first hire at ngrok, 📈 Jack Britton. When we opened up a data analysis role, we got 800 candidates in 24h. Jack stood out by first of all mentioning that he'd heard about the role from growth goddess Elena Verna reposting my search (thank you, why are you so good to me?) and by enumerating why his experience would be valuable and how he'd like to grow within the team. Jack not only helped the team get a grip on a truly ridiculous, B2C-level amount of data, but started to share his insights with Product, Engineering, and Go-to-Market, shaping some of the growth plays we've pursued over the past year. Like any good growth hire, he created flywheels of responsibility, building more and more ownership outside of data, and touching all the PLG things like PQLs, Marketing Nurture, Product, and more. Excited to see him continue to expand his PLG chops and reach and own more and more of the funnel. Thanks @jack, appreciate you!

From the outside looking in, startups are about finding good ideas and shipping them. But in a good startup, there's a plethora of good ideas--the real challenge comes in sequencing them. Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like that's where great teams really shine.

have any other heads of growth out there found raving success with a paid search agency or outsourced BDRs? asking on account of my inbox because apparently as a ~PLG~ operator i'm the ideal customer profile for these things :)

One of the most hilarious things about LinkedIn are the fitness gurus/finance professionals that reach out to you when you get a promotion. 🤣

Most of us, especially in PLG are working for companies that are not yet at scale. What separates the good from the great in terms of operators in this space are folks who get this and "act their scale" and aren't afraid to jump in and put in work to prove a hypothesis.

🤠 Tip: Most of the problems I've encountered at work are solved when I use more words and give folks more context on where I'm coming from.

SumoLogic launched flex pricing, aka more clear and transparent usage-based pricing. Pretty awesome to see more developer-focused products doing this, as its more than likely going to garner them more customers. One interesting trend I see is the notion of a usage calculator. I've typically seen that developers don't always 100% know their useage, and tend to skew it towards the high end, making your product feel much more expensive than it will be. What I'd love to see instead from these larger companies with massive marketing teams are user stories. How is company X using your product? How much do they pay? With a handful of case studies, you might do a better job of relating to a developer than a a calculator would. Still haven't seen this approach used, and I'm working on it on my end, but maybe there's a reason for that. Bad idea?