Jumped in a time machine on the way to the office this morning listening to a conversation referencing 2016 when PLG way just getting started. Kyle Poyar explained to Scott Barker on The GTM Podcast that back in 2016 when PLG was getting going, no one even called it PLG. Companies were throwing around terms like "bottom-up", "B2C2B", and "viral products." Everyone trying to describe the same thing in different ways. The first PLG summit Kyle put together? Just 100 people in a room, but what a room. Kyle and his team were watching companies like Datadog and Atlassian pioneer something completely different: -- No traditional sales motion -- Users finding value before talking to anyone -- Product doing the heavy lifting in acquisition -- Growth through actual usage, not just sales Fast forward to 2019: 600+ people at their summit, Figma's CCO keynoting. Then the pandemic hit and everything exploded. Suddenly everyone was at home, discovering and buying software on their own. PLG companies took off. Now, there are playbooks and there are similar companies to take inspiration from. But the initial PLG companies weren't following playbooks or frameworks. They were writing it from scratch, often pulling ideas from B2C and just seeing what worked. What started as a few companies experimenting has grown into an entire motion redefining how software is built, sold, and adopted. Thanks Kyle and Scott for the time machine, and the reminder that the best ideas often begin without a playbook.
