PLG (Product-Led Growth)
PLG (Product-Led Growth) is a go-to-market model where the product itself — through free tiers, trials and self-serve upgrades — does the acquiring, converting and expanding that a sales team would otherwise do. Slack, Figma and Notion are the canonical examples.
Worked example
A PLG devtool acquires 10,000 free users a month at near-zero CAC, converts 3% to paid self-serve, then routes accounts crossing 20 seats to a sales-assist team for enterprise conversion.
PLG shifts the metric stack: activation rate, free-to-paid conversion, and time-to-value matter as much as MRR, and blended CAC runs low while the product carries the acquisition load. The trap is assuming PLG means "no salespeople" — most successful PLG companies layer sales on top once usage signals identify serious accounts.
PLG suits products with fast individual time-to-value and natural spread inside teams. It works poorly where value only appears after heavy integration — that remains sales-led territory.
Compute it: CAC calculator