Product-Led Growth

Product-led growth is a growth model in which the product itself, rather than a sales team, drives acquisition, conversion and expansion.

Three conditions define the model: the product is reachable without talking to anyone, value is delivered before payment, and accounts grow through increased usage rather than negotiation. The measurement consequence is decisive: because the funnel moves inside the product, counting leads and meetings explains nothing and is replaced by activation rate, time to value, self-serve conversion and expansion rate, which makes product instrumentation the revenue reporting system rather than a side channel for the product team. The most common misreading equates the model with having a free tier. A free tier whose upgrade path runs through a sales call is still sales-led; what settles the question is which route most new revenue arrives through, and in most companies both routes run at once.