Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Elena Verna on how B2B growth is changing, product-led growth, product-led sales, why you should go freemium not trial, what features to make free, and much more

June 23, 2022

AI Summary

5 min read

Elena Verna, a growth expert with experience at Miro and Dropbox, shares a list of growth tactics that consistently fail, rooted in misconceptions about outsourcing growth, chasing shortcuts, and over-relying on rented channels. She emphasizes founder-led efforts until product-market fit (PMF) is proven with retention and data volume, then scaling through patterns like earned channels and layered growth models.

Timing growth team hires

Hire a head of growth only after achieving PMF—measured by retention and ideally $1M+ ARR—and sufficient user data for experiments; founders must lead initial distribution themselves. In sales-led B2B SaaS, prioritize sales hires first, delaying growth until overlaying product-led elements like self-serve acquisition or activation. Avoid hiring when growth is declining, as teams can't fix core product or GTM issues; first stabilize metrics via product and marketing.

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What you'll learn

1 **[00:07:35] Growth Tactics That Never Work: Hiring Growth Team Too Soon**
2 **[00:15:16] Don't Hire Growth Head to Fix Declining Business**
3 **[00:19:23] Rebrands/Homepage Redesigns Rarely Drive Growth**
4 **[00:25:13] Obsessing/Copying Competition Leads to Mediocrity**
5 **[00:34:02] Problems Aren't Unique—Leverage Patterns & Experts**
6 **[00:43:57] Prioritize Owned/Earned Channels Over SEO/SEM/Social**
7 **[00:50:58] Overlay Growth Models (PLG + Sales + Marketing)**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Elena Verna has led growth at some of today’s most successful B2B businesses, including Miro as CMO, Surveymonkey as SVP of Growth, and now at Amplitude as interim Head of Growth. She’s also worked closely with over a dozen companies on growth and product strategy, including companies like MongoDB, Clockwise, and Netlify (where she sits on the board of directors). Elena is undoubtedly one of the smartest people on growth strategy in the world.

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Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Persona: https://withpersona.com/lenny

• Stytch: https://stytch.com/

• PostHog: https://posthog.com/lenny

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In this episode, we cover:

1) How did Elena go from an analyst at Safeway to Head of Product at Amplitude?

2) What’s changing in B2B growth?

3) What exactly is “product-led growth,” and how can you apply it at every stage of growth?

4) How is PLG already transforming itself?

5) Why do you need to be both product-led and sales-led?

6) Why does PLG often get crushed when you move upmarket, and how do you avoid this?

7) What it looks like when your PLG motion is dying.

8) Why product-led is the future of sales.

9) Why is freemium the way to go, over trial?

10) Why should you hire internally for your first growth hire?

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Where to find Elena:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenaverna

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