The journey to becoming a product-led company

How Popular Companies Got Initial Product-Market Fit

Last week, I tweeted about my take on how several popular tech companies achieved initial product-market fit. Dropbox, for instance, built an innovative product with a solid two-sided referral incentive. Calendly reduced friction and created a viral loop. Here's how companies like Trello, Zapier, and Instagram also achieved initial product-market fit. 

The Acquihire Market for Startups Is Ice Cold

Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent at your startup, you created an acquisition "outcome floor" for your company. While acquihire potential isn't enough to justify venture funding, it is an interesting option for teams to find the right home when things aren't working out for them as independent companies. What do you think about this strategy?

Why Chegg's Stock Sank Last Week

Last Monday, Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig shared that since March, the company saw a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT. They now believe it's impacting their new customer growth rate. The next day, Chegg stock fell 45%. It'll be interesting to see how Chegg (and many other companies) adjusts its company strategy to incorporate AI over the next few years. 

One Startup's Journey to Product-Market Fit

Two years ago, a startup called June raised $2 million in a seed round. The company recently shared what they did since to achieve product-market fit. It covers how they chose a problem to solve, explained the problem effectively, and started reaching new users reliably. This is an excellent read for anyone running an early-stage startup still looking for PMF. 

The Journey To Becoming a Product-Led Company

Kirsten Mann, the Chief Product Officer at Prospection, shares some of her company's learnings on transitioning from a service-led to a product-led company. She drives home a handful of essential points, but one that stood out to me is the importance of having a set of guiding principles to help ground decision-making when things get complicated. 

Unlocking Organic Content Marketing Growth

There are three keys to unlocking organic content-driven growth: originality and accessibility, capturing existing demand, and utilizing a technical SEO checklist. This thread explains how you can use each one to drive organic growth. I appreciate how detailed and practical this advice is. 

Scaling Developer Content Production

Developer-first security platform Synk finds and automatically fixes vulnerabilities in code, cloud environment, and dependencies. The company decided that content production was one of its best growth levers. Here's how Synk built a scalable content strategy and has driven hundreds of thousands of additional web sessions to date. 

Using Discord To Start an AI Growth Flywheel

The Opus Clip team uses generative AI to repurpose long videos into shorts with one click easily. After launching their private beta in April, they set an ambitious quarterly goal for creator acquisition and wound up hitting their three-month goal in under three weeks. This is a great read about how they used Discord to start an AI growth flywheel.