9.7.21 Notorious PLG
Weekly update on the most important product-led growth (PLG) companies
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Notorious PLG Startup of the Week:
Reprise is a product experience platform that help customers experience product magic sooner. I know what you may be thinking - what a minute, don’t PLG companies avoid demos? Often yes, but many customers still actively seek out demos to learn more about a product than they might be able to learn from solo exploration. Furthermore, for larger and more complicated products, a demo is often needed to demonstrate product value rather than risk a customer getting lost.
In my opinion, the future of demos is not a sales rep walking you through a static view of the product, but it’s instead an immersive product experience with self-guided exploration so the customer can experience product value firsthand on their own time. With Reprise, companies can go beyond static demos and create rich, interactive and personalized demos that customers can play around with. Thus, Reprise eliminates sales friction and helps prospective customers understand and experience product value immediately - a core tenant of product-led growth.
Reprise is already working top software companies including Algolia, Outreach, Medallia and Pendo. I am excited about the evolution of product demos as this allows customers yet another option if they want to learn more about the product, but not necessarily interact with a sales rep. More power in the hands of the customer is a good thing and Reprise is building towards this future.
For this edition of Notorious PLG, the Reprise management team shared their thoughts with me on PLG and their GTM approach:
“Reprise is an enterprise-ready demo/product experience platform for teams that need to tell product stories through demos and product tours to drive product-led growth and close deals faster. With Reprise, business teams capture the front end of their products and get full control to customize the product experience, add interactive guides, share or embed the experience, and analyze usage.
On the sales side, reps at organizations like Bonusly create tailored demos for their live sessions and as leave-behinds. They also need to be able to create these experiences on their own, with no help from engineering and in a fraction of the time. These product-led sales motions allow the SDR or AE to keep the product upfront while assisting the prospect across the buyer journey.
On the marketing side, organizations like Troops.ai who are keen on PLG, use product tours to allow their prospects to self-educate before deciding to engage with sales. They have seen a 5x increase in engagement on their main product tour CTA .
Both the sales and marketing teams leverage product engagement data to gauge intent and determine what actions to take or next steps within the product-led customer journey.
We love product-led growth here at Reprise. For more information on product-led growth or incorporating product-led growth into sales and marketing tactics, feel free to reach out to Jorge Soto at Jorge@getreprise.com.”
Please email any Notorious PLG of the Week suggestions to me at zach@wing.vc
PLG Tweet(s) of the Week:
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Recent PLG Financings (Private Companies):
Anima: a Tel Aviv-based no-code design platform raised $10M Series A led by MizMaa Ventures. With Anima, users can go from high fidelity prototypes to developer friendly code that engineers can build upon quickly.
Discourse: open source discussion platform raised $20M Series A at $100M post-money valuation from First Round Capital and Pace Capital.
Alpaca: equities trading software API raised $50M Series B led by Tribe Capital.
Databricks: open and unified platform for data and AI raised $1.6B Series H at $38B post-money valuation led by Counterpoint Global.
Recent PLG Performance (Public Companies):
Financial data as of Friday market close.
Biggest Stock Gainers (1 week):
Monday.com: 14%
WalkMe: 13%
Agora: 11%
Biggest Stock Gainers (1 month):
Monday.com: 80%
Bill.com: 37%
Digital Ocean: 17%
Enterprise Value / TTM Revenue:
Top quartile: 41.1x
Median: 21.8x
Lower quartile: 10.8x
Enterprise Value / NTM Revenue:
Top quartile: 29.8x
Median: 16.5x
Lower quartile: 8.8x
Rule of 40 (TTM Revenue Growth % + FCF Margin %):
Top quartile: 50%
Median: 36%
Lower quartile: 28%
Median % of Sales:
S&M: 45%
R&D: 31%
G&A: 19%
Net Revenue Retention:
Top quartile: 130%
Median: 123%
Lower quartile: 115%
GM-Adjusted CAC Payback Period (Months):
Top quartile: 16
Median: 21
Lower quartile: 28
15 Highest EV / NTM Multiples:
Notorious PLG Dataset (click to zoom):
Note: TTM = Trailing Twelve Months; NTM = Next Twelve Months. Rule of 40 = TTM Revenue Growth % + FCF Margin %. GM-Adjusted CAC Payback = Change in Quarterly Revenue / (Gross Margin % * Prior Quarter Sales & Marketing Expense) * 12.
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