Balancing the two muscles of PLG

Every bottom-up PLG company faces this tension:

PLG gets you in. Enterprise funds the future. They need vastly different products - how do you prioritize?

With constrained resources, do you neglect the motion filling your funnel or the one landing big contracts?

Self-serve defaults to solving issues with product.

When users are free or $10/month, fixes must scale.

You improve docs. Tighten onboarding. Rename confusing buttons. Add smart defaults.

The product teaches itself at scale - that muscle atrophies fast if you stop using it.

Enterprise is different: solve with people, then backfill with product.

Six- and seven-figure customers expect white-glove service.

You jump on calls. Walk them through workflows. Write one-off scripts. You invest in hand-holding instead of fixing root causes.

Thus, it’s easy to deprioritize the motion that fills your funnel. Which can be detrimental.

E.g for Socket, their CEO / co-founder Feross told me:

Their budget sits with security, but engineers are their stakeholders.

When engineers recognize you - from using your free product, seeing your public pages, or reading your blog - enterprise deals tilt your way.

Going enterprise-only as they scale - like too many companies do - erodes that edge.

Keep PLG surfaces healthy to win long-term. Even if it means moving slower on enterprise deals in the short-term.

Your PLG motion often isn’t just customer acquisition - it’s your competitive moat in enterprise deals.

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Enjoyed reading this?

Then check out my conversation on the focal podcast with Feross Aboukhadijeh, the CEO and Co-Founder of Socket ($65M raised from a16z, Abstract, Dylan Field, Aaron Levie, and others).

Youtube | Apple Podcast | Spotify

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