Hila Qu is the director of growth at GitLab, a developer platform. GitLab offers a powerful platform that enables developers, engineers, and teams to build, release, and deploy very efficiently. The company started as an open-source product, but it became a PLG business as it has the criteria to be one. Due to its large free user base, GitLab was able to launch a PLG motion. Data on how users utilize the platform also allowed them to understand which features they use and what behaviors indicate that they are likely to convert to potential PQ. Hila provides details on how she created all these from scratch to grow GitLab and gives the six steps to launch a PLG motion.
Show Notes
[00:47] What GitLab is and how they started the PLG motion
[08:44] How existing sales motion works before getting into the PLG side of things
[17:18] Aligning on the customer journey and funnel design
[31:00] Organize the right teams the right way
[36:07] Recommendations for infrastructure and tool stack dependent on company size
[40:45] How to identify the highest ROI focus area for PLG efforts
[46:28] Anticipating common challenges and building the PLG culture
[49:56] Hila’s advice for starting a PLG motion
About Hila Qu
Hila is a uniquely talented growth leader. Prior to her current role at GitLab, Hila worked at Acorns, a financial technology, and services company that specializes in micro-investing and robo-investing. At Acorns, she founded and developed the growth team into a 20+ member team, drove the customer base from 1M to over 4M, and launched two new product lines. Now at GitLab, she leads their growth product team that has since generated over $1.5M incremental ARR from growth product initiatives & experiments in just the first six months. Needless to say, Hila lives every day in the world of growth, retention, analytics, and products (some nights too).
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ProductLed Podcast
The ProductLed Podcast is a weekly interview series with both product-led growth leaders and practitioners who have real knowledge to share on what it takes to use their product to grow a business.