John Zeratsky

Lots of misconceptions about what product-led growth really is. So I sat down with the man himself, Wes Bush to go deep on: - what PLG really means - Who it's for (and who it's not for) - How you can think about implementing a true PLG motion in your business. Even if you're sales-led today, this is a great listen cause it talks to the psychology of a buyer a lot. https://lnkd.in/d4VvJmru

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Want to know if a dev agency is truly on your side? See if they push back. A lot of agencies just chase billable hours, agreeing to every tech need without question. But the best agencies focus on building something meaningful— products that people love and client partnerships they’re proud of. They don’t just say “yes” to every feature request. They ask tough questions, challenge assumptions, and keep the dialogue going. They want clients to win because successful clients become their best sales reps.

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I reflect each week using my 3W's. Reflection = Sharpening my Axe. ** W1: What was great? ** We were the only alpha UX/UI Design as a Service company for Tech & SaaS at Collision 2024, for Startups in growth mode and existing SMB's. ** W2: What am I most proud of? ** I hired a fashion designer and we designed costumes that were a huge hit during the conference that branded our agency in a big way. We all dressed up as astronauts from the "digital space". We made it fun. Doing business was fun. Cold visitors, became engaged leads because it was fun. ** W3: What was a lesson learned? ** To believe like a child, and make plans like an adult. We imagined MK-Way as a creative crew from the "digital space". We see ourselves as the creative team from another galaxy. The costume costs were $167, But... We laughed. Visitors were intrigued. We were branded. We had offline visitors becoming online contacts. And the best is yet to come.... #collisionconf2024 #leadership #uxdesign

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Tech Hubble was struggling to attract high-level customers. Here's how we worked with Jaydon Connolly-Graham to fix this with his branding. Tech Hubble couldn't resonate with execs and business leaders. Their messaging was unclear leaving them positioned as a 'jack of all trades'. Along with their weak and outdated identity, building trust and resonating with their ICP proved difficult. We helped them solve this by: 1.) Finding their unique edge, story and voice 2.) Build a 1-of-a-kind brand identity system - that stands out. 3.) Position them as the go-to platform for their ICP Have a look at the full project walkthrough and case study below: #brandstrategy #branding #b2b #brandidentity

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How do you turn 125 good ideas into 3 ideas worth testing and pursuing? Tomorrow, we’re sitting down with our friends at T4 to discuss exactly this. We’ll go through everything you need to know to conduct a market opportunity analysis and examples of companies that have done this well and not so well. This is crucial for any founder or aspiring founder to listen to. Register here 👇

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Highly recommend launching a case study-adjacent "testimonials" or "wall of love" section on your site. Easy to design + high ROI for building trust. Some teams have been executing this particularly well recently: Nico F. @ Default, Akhil Reddy @ Thera (YC S22), and Tyler Denk 🐝 @ beehiiv. At Verbatim, our workflow for updating our testimonial page is pretty simple. The minute that we ship a new case study, we'll pull the best 1-2x quotes from the asset, send them to our designer, and immediately update the new page. If we want to push a testimonial but haven't recorded a full case study yet, our strategy & operations team will ask a customer directly for a new pull quote. Definitely recommend more teams leverage this workflow - great way to double down on social proof + increase conversion rate across your site pages ⚡

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Have you ever looked for theory that can answer - how to approach investors - what kind of product to build first - how you’ll defend the company against competitors This new article from CDA partner, Kevin Maney extends Steven Johnson's writing from the book Emergence to #CategoryDesign. All #Startups and #VentureCapital teams should dig in. (link to article in comments)

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Maven is having a killer quarter after a strong last 12 months. People rarely share this publicly, so here's an insider look into how we've navigated product/market fit: Maven’s initial launch was wildly successful. We started a movement. The phrase we coined, “cohort-based course,” showed up in countless startup pitch decks. We were on a $4M GMV run rate in 3 months. It was intoxicating. After the launch energy faded, we faced reality. We had no product: we were hand-holding instructors behind the scenes. This resulted in a 73% instructor revenue retention rate, and many instructors were telling us we weren’t critical to their business. Today: It took 2 years, but we’re now at 120-140% instructor revenue retention. Our business is growing despite a tough market, and professionals are actually using (and loving) our product to speed up their careers. We made a few critical decisions that led to 3 big breakthroughs: Breakthrough #1: We started by looking at follower counts; now we focus on real professional expertise. Our first persona was creators with 100ks of followers, but Maven was often their 3rd or 4th priority. Simply put, they didn’t NEED us, but they were bringing in a ton of revenue. We shifted away from creators to experts, eventually losing 95% of our first $4M in course sales. This shift took 2 years, but it worked – Maven now has hundreds of “subject matter expert” instructors who have spent 10-15 years in their field. Today, Maven has its killer value proposition: we offer ambitious professionals access to the experienced operators to take their career to the next level. Lesson: Persona is key. Focusing on who really needs your product is more important than short-term traction. Sometimes the early signals are wrong, and you need to course correct. Breakthrough #2: We started as a platform; now Maven is a marketplace. When starting Maven, I envied the Substack business and modeled Maven off of it. Maven would provide software while the creator would bring the users. This was a failure of “business by analogy.” In the course world, instructors didn’t value software the way creators did in the newsletter world. They demanded we create a marketplace, and students were increasingly asking us why they couldn’t easily find great courses on Maven. I knew from my time at Udemy and Lyft how hard it is to build a two-sided marketplace, so I resisted this for 1.5 years of heavy internal debate. Eventually, we launched the Maven marketplace. Now, hundreds of thousands of students browse Maven’s courses to find something that can help them in their careers. 25%+ of all course sales come from Maven’s marketing, which has been critical to our instructors and students. Lesson: Find your own path. You can be inspired by other companies, but ultimately every market and situation is different. Be willing to change even the big things when your customer demands it. I reached LinkedIn's character limit so check the comments for the rest!

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Dev agency opportunities come in all shapes and sizes. While you shouldn’t say yes to every project that comes your way, flexibility should be a feature of dev agencies. A big value prop is that clients can spin up projects, scale up, and scale down without the overhead of hiring an in-house team. You can quickly add UX/UI, QAs, and PMs, freeing developers from design, testing, and unclear requirements. The team can be disbanded as needed. You’re fast tracking team dynamics because your team knows each other. Of course, all of this hinges on being a well-functioning dev agency.

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NEW POST: Sell. Design. Build. I have come to believe that one framework is more important than any other in the pursuit of product market fit. It is called Sell, Design, Build. I learned it originally from Andy Rachleff (surprise!) while at Wealthfront, and I’ve seen it used by some of the best startups in the world to launch products that quickly strike a nerve with customers. I wrote a post to describe the framework and process and to share a few case studies. Enjoy!

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What's going to happen with venture studios in 2025? Here are a few predictions: 1️⃣ More venture studios are coming That shouldn't be a surprise, and overall it's a good thing, but with a grain of salt. I believe the bar will go up on quality + expectations of venture studios (from founders, partners, co-investors, etc.), b/c the more hype, the more questions that people will ask (that's a good thing). There are 3 types of studios that will emerge more in 2025: * Vertical venture studios: Focused on a narrow industry * Geographic-specific studios: Focused on a geography (often used in part for economic development in a location); I believe these should also go vertical though * Corporate venture studios: Big companies are learning about venture studios and more of them will see the potential to use a venture studio as a vehicle for growth. 2️⃣ More VCs will warm up to the venture studio model Some VCs will never invest in a venture studio deal. Totally fine. But more will in 2025. The cap table for many deals will remain an issue, but in the end as more quality, scaling startups get built through the studio model, VCs will join. I've never belied there's one way to build great businesses. There are patterns, but no formulas. Venture studios have and will create giant companies. Others will get built in other ways. VCs will invest across the board. 3️⃣ More capital will fuel venture studios (but it's early) I think we'll see more capital allocators investing into studios, but it's early days. Studios are more complicated than VC funds. Investors are still learning about venture studios. There's confusion about what they are and how to position them with / against VC funds or other investment opportunities. 4️⃣ More venture studio failures It's not all rosy. Building a sustainable venture studio model is tough. The business model is messy, b/c most studios can't live exclusively off management fees like VC funds. So they need alternative revenue sources. Plus they have more costs per dollar invested. I've already seen a few studios shutdown in 2024 (or slow down drastically / reduce staff). More will come in 2025 and beyond. That's part of a maturing market. 5️⃣ Fuzzy data on performance Believe the hype! Just not blindly. :) There are a few people working very hard on collecting more robust / quality data on venture studio performance, but it's tough. I'd love to see Peter Walker at Carta get into it (if Carta can figure out what startup actually came from a studio, which is not always obvious!) Realistically the data on venture studio performance will remain fuzzy for awhile. I fundamentally believe the venture studio model will generate strong returns, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it! But the industry-wide data is rough/early at best. I think it'll get better in 2025, but will still be fuzzy.

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3 years of pricing lessons at Equals condensed into one blog post. Since starting the company, we've tinkered a lot with pricing and packaging. It's one of the single most impactful levers early stage companies can pull. I think folks *don't* experiment with pricing enough, or take big enough bets when they do. We've tried free. We've tried completely sales led. We've tried not listing pricing on the site. Matt Hodges details all the plans we've had, why, and what we've learned in our latest installment on Wrap Text. https://lnkd.in/ecckEDba

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The best founders can turn off emotions when making complex decisions. If you can hone this skill, you should.

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YC companies don’t just ship fast—they obsess over the details 🚀 When we revamped NewsCatcherapi.com (YC S22), we realized something simple: a navbar isn’t just navigation. It’s your site’s first impression. We added a subtle hover animation to their navbar links—nothing flashy, but purposeful. Here’s the truth: Top startups don’t get a pass for clunky UX. Their users expect seamless interactions, and tiny details can make or break that trust. What’s one small UX detail that stuck with you recently? Link to this site in the comments 👇🏻

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Forgot to share April’s product update on LI last week, so here we go… 🧩 Inject custom components into tables - Vizzly now offers a callback function for you to inject custom components into Vizzly tables. For example: imagery, buttons, or anything you can fit in a table really. 🏷️ Tags for Views in the Template Library - For those using (or wanting to use) Custom Reporting, Vizzly has the concept of a ‘Template Library’. You can tag these templated views to make them more searchable. 📊 Standalone View Editor component - Some of you have requested this to help your customers explore data and discover insights outside of your dashboard or reporting capability. So we built it! 🧭 Introducing the Dashbaord Explorer - When you log into the Vizzly app, you will see Vizzly Lite has been replaced with the Dashboard Explorer. Here, you can test Vizzly without connecting your DB or API. 🙋 Other developments - Support for arrays with the Snowflake integration. - Custom Percentage custom metric now supports Or logic. - Performance improvements with initial dashboard render. - Launched our new marketing site. ✌️

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Product Market Fit, a new framework. I've been working on this for a little while now and figured it's time to "eat my own dogfood" and test it out in the market. In this framework I provide a visual outline of the journey from "day zero" to PMF. Along the way founders must iterate on their product as well as their market to close the Product Market Gap in order to get to PMF. More details in the article. Let me know what you think 🙏 https://lnkd.in/gyF8V--x

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To launch Viddy Studio we’re using the framework laid out in Jeff Walker’s book “Launch.” Specifically the Seed Launch. Before reading the book I wasn’t sure how we would actually get the word out, but he breaks it down so clearly that it made it feel possible and fun. One of the first things he recommends is to build up a list so you can send out emails. To do this we’re using beehiiv. If you have a product you’re trying to launch, this book is a game changer. I can’t recommend it enough and it’s been recommended to me by people who have used it to make tens of millions from their launches over the years. p.s if you want to see how we do this launch then you can see our newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/ghzb_sQb

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When to hit the funding gas pedal (for most startups): ⏱️ Earliest point: Problem/Solution Fit Investors aren't here to bankroll product development, but rather to invest in traction. At this stage, you're moving from hoping to knowing that customers want what you're offering. They're investing in: A bright future evidenced by solid customer commitments. 🚀 Best time: Product/Market Fit Before this sweet spot, you're trying to learn while investors are itching for growth. Once you hit it, growth is the name of the game for both you and your investors. They're buying in: A model that's not only repeatable but can scale, eyeing a 10x growth potential. 👊 The dream scenario: Never 😄 Why not keep it in-house and grow a business that thrives on customer satisfaction? It's a path less travelled, focusing on steady, reliable growth rather than chasing the unicorn dream. P.S. Even Camels—a.k.a. those who opt for a steadier approach—can still attract funding, aiming for strategic expansion rather than a bailout.

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