Product-Led Growth
Product-led growth is how Slack, Figma, Notion, and Linear grew to billions in ARR without traditional sales teams. The product is the primary vehicle for acquisition, retention, and expansion. This course teaches you the PLG fundamentals, the metrics, and the specific product decisions that create a self-sustaining growth machine.
What you'll learn
Course outline
Free — no account needed
What PLG Actually Means (It's Not Just a Freemium Plan)
The core philosophy, the flywheel, and why PLG changes every product and go-to-market decision
The PLG Flywheel — Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Expansion
The four-phase growth loop that makes PLG products compound over time
Defining Your Product's Aha Moment
Find the exact event that predicts retention — and redesign your product around getting users there faster
Full course — $59 one-time
Freemium vs Free Trial — Which Conversion Path Fits Your Product
The framework for choosing the right monetisation model for your specific product and market
Activation — Getting Users to First Value Fast
The onboarding and in-app guidance patterns that dramatically improve activation rates
In-Product Virality — How Slack, Figma, and Notion Spread
Build the sharing mechanics and collaborative features that turn users into your growth channel
Expansion Revenue — Turning Users Into Bigger Customers
The PLG mechanisms that automatically grow revenue without sales calls
Measuring PLG — The Metrics That Actually Matter
The north star metric, the leading indicators, and the dashboard that keeps PLG growth on track
Get the full course
8 lessons — from PLG flywheel fundamentals to virality, expansion revenue, and PQL scoring.
Written by the RadarTrek editorial team · Reviewed June 2026
About this course
Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market strategy where the product itself is the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion — rather than a sales team or advertising. Learning PLG means understanding free-tier design, activation metrics, time-to-value, in-product upsell triggers, and the viral loops that make products grow without proportionally increasing marketing spend. This product-led growth tutorial covers the strategies used by Figma, Notion, Slack, and the modern generation of PLG companies.
PLG is particularly powerful for developer tools, productivity software, and collaboration products where the value is immediately demonstrable. After this course you will be able to design a free tier that attracts users and creates upgrade pressure, identify and optimise your activation event, build in-product upgrade flows, and measure the PLG metrics that predict sustainable growth.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between PLG and traditional SaaS sales?
Traditional SaaS relies on a sales team to identify prospects, run demos, and close deals — typically requiring a marketing-qualified lead process, long sales cycles, and high customer acquisition costs. PLG lets users experience value before paying, so the product does the selling. Users adopt individually or in small teams, discover value, and either upgrade themselves or champion the product internally. PLG dramatically reduces CAC and scales without a proportional increase in headcount.
What should I include in a free tier?
The free tier should be genuinely valuable enough to attract users and reveal the product's full potential — not a crippled version. But it should stop short of what your target paying customers need at scale. Common free-tier limits: usage (X requests/month, X projects), seats (up to 3 team members), storage (X GB), or features (basic features free, advanced features paid). The limit should create natural upgrade pressure as users grow and get more value.
What is an activation event?
The activation event is the specific action that predicts long-term retention — the moment users first experience the core value of your product. For Slack, activation correlates with sending a certain number of messages. For Dropbox, it was adding files that sync. Identifying your activation event requires analysing which early actions correlate with retention, then optimising your onboarding to drive users to that moment as quickly as possible.
What is time-to-value and why does it matter?
Time-to-value (TTV) measures how long it takes a new user to reach the activation event — to experience the core benefit of your product. Shorter TTV correlates strongly with activation and retention. Every step between sign-up and the "aha moment" that is not strictly necessary is friction that loses users. Optimising TTV means removing steps, pre-filling information, providing templates, and guiding users directly to their first meaningful outcome.
What PLG metrics should I track?
Key PLG metrics: activation rate (% of sign-ups who reach the activation event), time-to-value (average time to activation), free-to-paid conversion rate (% of free users who upgrade), expansion revenue (additional revenue from existing customers upgrading), and PQL rate (Product Qualified Lead — free users who exhibit strong upgrade signals). Track these alongside standard SaaS metrics (MRR, churn, CAC, LTV) for a complete picture.