7 Product Led Growth Examples to Steal in 2025
In SaaS, your product isn't just what you sell—it's your best growth engine. Forget the old sales model. The new playbook is simple: let customers experience value firsthand. Get that right, and they’ll become your fiercest advocates. This is product-led growth (PLG), a strategy that puts your product at the absolute center of acquiring, converting, and expanding your customer base.
To truly get why your product is your best salesperson, you need a clear definition of product growth. Once you have that down, it's time for real-world application. This listicle cuts through the theory and dives straight into actionable product led growth examples. We’ve handpicked the best platforms and resources that don’t just teach PLG—they live it.
Instead of vague success stories, you'll get strategic breakdowns and tactical insights. Each entry comes with detailed analysis, screenshots, and direct links so you can see exactly how these companies use their product to win. You'll walk away with proven strategies to apply to your own business and turn your product into a sales and marketing machine.
1. ProductLed
Stop reinventing the wheel. ProductLed is the ultimate resource hub for teams who want to learn from other product-led growth examples. Founded by Wes Bush, author of the book Product-Led Growth, this isn't a single tool. It's a full-blown educational ecosystem designed to teach PLG through practical, battle-tested frameworks. It’s the perfect launchpad for founders and product managers who need a step-by-step guide to building a PLG strategy from scratch.
The platform’s power is its "show, don't tell" approach. Forget abstract theories. ProductLed delivers concrete playbooks, templates, and benchmark data from winning PLG companies. This makes it an invaluable resource for mastering the mechanics of a successful product-led model.
Strategic Breakdown
ProductLed’s own strategy is a masterclass in PLG. It weaponizes high-value educational content to attract and qualify leads for its premium advisory services. The free 45-minute masterclass is a killer freemium entry point, delivering instant value and showcasing the depth of their expertise.
This builds trust and proves ROI before asking for a single dollar. They effectively use their own teachings to drive their business, making them a meta-example of product-led growth in action.
Key Insight: ProductLed proves education is the product. By offering free, high-impact resources (like a masterclass or book), they create a zero-friction entry point that funnels qualified, educated buyers directly to their high-ticket advisory programs.
Actionable Takeaways
Build a "Masterclass" Funnel: Create a free, high-value webinar or mini-course that solves one core problem for your ideal customer. Use it to prove your expertise and create a clear path to your paid product.
Weaponize Your Content: Gate your best, most in-depth content (think playbooks or templates) behind a simple email signup. This builds your audience and gives you a direct line to nurture leads.
Benchmark Ruthlessly: Use their articles to compare your activation and conversion rates against industry standards. Find and fix the leaks in your funnel.
Website: https://productled.com
2. Reforge
Ready to graduate from the basics? Reforge offers deep, operator-led programs that dissect product-led growth with surgical precision. This isn't just another course platform; it's an advanced training ground for pros who need to master the systems behind scaling a product. Reforge is built to upskill entire teams, turning the hard-won lessons of industry vets into repeatable growth models.
Reforge’s biggest weapon is its reliance on real-world operator experience. No high-level theory here. Members get access to a massive library of 600+ guides and 1,400+ artifacts (templates, frameworks) pulled directly from the playbooks of top tech companies. It's a must-have for teams implementing sophisticated growth marketing and PLG strategies.
Strategic Breakdown
Reforge’s own PLG strategy is built on a premium, community-driven model. It uses the reputation of its instructors (all seasoned operators) and the depth of its exclusive content as its core product. Forget free trials. Reforge gates its entire ecosystem behind a membership, creating a powerful sense of exclusivity and high value.
This premium-first approach guarantees every member is highly qualified and committed, creating a high-signal community. Their product-led motion is all about demonstrating overwhelming value after the paywall, driving retention and team-wide expansion through proven results. They’ve built a powerful moat with proprietary knowledge and community.
Key Insight: Reforge shows that a premium, content-gated model can be a devastatingly effective PLG strategy. By focusing on elite, operator-led expertise and an exclusive ecosystem, they attract high-intent customers ready to invest upfront for unmatched strategic depth.
Actionable Takeaways
Build a Knowledge Moat: Create proprietary frameworks, templates, and case studies that can't be found anywhere else. This becomes your product's core value and a powerful reason for customers to pay.
Flex Your Operator Credibility: If your product involves expertise, put the real-world practitioners front and center. This builds massive trust and sets you apart from theory-only solutions.
Create a "Taste Test": While Reforge is premium, you can adapt their model. Offer a single, deep-dive artifact or framework for an email signup to give users a taste of the immense value behind your paywall.
Website: https://www.reforge.com
3. OpenView Partners
If you're looking for the data-driven backbone of product-led growth, OpenView Partners is a goldmine. As the expansion-stage VC firm that helped coin the term "product-led growth," their content isn't just theory—it's backed by years of investment data and portfolio company battle scars. Their website is the go-to resource for SaaS founders who need hard numbers and benchmarks to guide their strategy.
OpenView excels at turning complex SaaS metrics into actionable guidance. From acquisition funnel benchmarks to detailed financial reports, they provide the concrete numbers you need to measure and optimize your PLG motion. This is where you go to move beyond buzzwords and into the quantifiable reality of building a winning PLG company.
Strategic Breakdown
OpenView's content strategy is a masterclass in building authority through data. By publishing their annual SaaS Benchmarks report for free, they’ve established themselves as the definitive source for PLG metrics. This high-signal content attracts their perfect audience: ambitious founders of high-growth SaaS companies—their ideal investment targets.
Their approach is a perfect loop: their investments generate proprietary data, which they turn into industry-leading content, which in turn attracts the next wave of top-tier founders. They don't just write about PLG; they actively shape and define it.
Key Insight: OpenView proves that proprietary data is an unbeatable moat. By centralizing and sharing benchmark data that no one else has, they've built an invaluable, non-replicable resource that positions them as the undisputed authority in the PLG space, fueling their core business of venture capital.
Actionable Takeaways
Benchmark Your Funnel: Grab their annual SaaS benchmarks report and compare your key metrics (free-to-paid conversion, activation rate, net dollar retention) against the best in the business. This is one of the most practical product led growth examples for finding your weaknesses.
Turn Data into Content: No VC portfolio? No problem. Survey your users or industry to create a unique data report. It’s a powerful lead magnet and an instant authority-builder.
Master Expansion Revenue: Dive into their articles on pricing and expansion. OpenView provides killer frameworks for driving growth from your existing customer base—a core PLG principle.
Website: https://openviewpartners.com
4. Pendo (Product‑Led Hub)
Ready to move from PLG theory to execution? Pendo’s Product‑Led Hub is your action plan. It brilliantly blends education with its own product, creating a seamless bridge between learning and doing. The hub is packed with practical playbooks, example-driven articles, and customer stories on specific PLG motions like defining PQLs, creating usage-based upgrades, and optimizing in-app guidance.
What makes Pendo so effective is its immediate call to action. After reading a detailed guide on improving user onboarding, you can sign up for Pendo's free tier and start building in-app guides right away. This direct link between content and product turns passive learning into active experimentation.
Strategic Breakdown
Pendo’s strategy is a perfect example of content-led product adoption. By giving away high-quality, actionable content for free, they attract their ideal customer: product managers and marketers desperate to implement PLG. The hub acts as the top of their funnel, educating users on the "why" and "how" before seamlessly introducing Pendo as the "with what."
The free product tier is the knockout punch. It lets users experience the product's value firsthand with zero financial risk. This freemium model uses the product itself as the primary sales tool, proving its worth by helping users implement the very strategies they just learned. It's a powerful, self-reinforcing loop of education and activation.
Key Insight: Pendo proves the shortest path from education to activation is a straight line. By embedding their free product tier directly into their educational hub, they eliminate friction and empower users to immediately apply new knowledge, dramatically shrinking the time-to-value.
Actionable Takeaways
Pair Content with a Freemium Tool: If you have a tool, create educational content that solves a related problem and offer a free version of your product as the instant solution. It’s a natural, low-friction entry point.
Create Role-Specific Playbooks: Tailor your content to different roles (e.g., marketers vs. product managers). This makes your advice hyper-relevant and shows you deeply understand your audience's unique pains.
Optimize Your In-App Nudges: Use Pendo’s playbooks to design better in-app messages for your own product. This is a core tactic in many product led growth examples and a critical skill for nailing user onboarding.
Website: https://www.pendo.io/product-led/
5. Gainsight (Product‑Led Growth Index)
Wondering how your product-led growth efforts stack up against the competition? Gainsight’s Product‑Led Growth Index is your report card. Instead of just another tool, Gainsight offers a data-driven ecosystem built around its industry report. It includes a downloadable report and an interactive self-assessment that helps you measure your PLG maturity and pinpoint gaps in your strategy.
The index's unique power is its ability to turn industry data into a personalized roadmap. Answer a few questions, and you'll see exactly where you stand on the PLG maturity curve and get tailored recommendations. It’s an invaluable resource for leaders looking to justify investment in product experience (PX) initiatives.
Strategic Breakdown
Gainsight brilliantly uses its PLG Index as a lead generation machine for its core product, Gainsight PX. The free report and assessment tool deliver massive immediate value, establishing Gainsight as an authority. This educational content is their top-of-funnel magnet, attracting qualified pros who are actively trying to solve PLG challenges.
By linking assessment results directly to the capabilities of its PX platform, Gainsight creates a seamless path from problem identification to solution. It’s a genius example of using data-backed content to educate the market and guide prospects straight to a paid product that solves the very issues they just uncovered.
Key Insight: Gainsight shows that valuable industry benchmarks can be a product in themselves. By offering a free, data-rich assessment, they attract high-intent users, diagnose their specific pain points, and then perfectly position their paid software as the only logical next step.
Actionable Takeaways
Build a Self-Assessment Tool: Create an interactive quiz or calculator that helps potential customers benchmark their performance in an area where your product shines. Use the results to deliver personalized insights and recommendations.
Educate with Data: Commission original research or a survey and publish the findings as a gated report. This move positions your brand as a thought leader and generates high-quality leads.
Bridge the Insight-to-Action Gap: Don’t just show users their problems; show them the solution. Connect the dots between the insights from your free content and the features of your paid product to make the upgrade a no-brainer. This is also key to figuring out how to increase customer retention.
Website: https://www.gainsight.com/resource/product-led-growth-index-2022-tool/
6. Apple Books (Product-Led Growth e-book)
For founders who prefer to learn on their own time, the foundational e-book Product-Led Growth by Wes Bush is the ultimate tactical manual. This isn't just a book; it's a playbook packed with actionable frameworks and real-world product led growth examples. It's the go-to resource for anyone who wants to master the core principles of PLG without committing to a full course.
The platform’s strength is its seamless integration into the Apple ecosystem, offering instant access and searchable text. This lets practitioners find specific examples or templates on the fly, making it a highly practical field guide. Its low cost and instant delivery make it one of the most accessible entry points into product-led strategy.
Strategic Breakdown
The e-book itself is a product-led onboarding tool for Wes Bush's entire PLG ecosystem, including ProductLed's courses and advisory services. By offering a comprehensive, low-cost product upfront, it delivers immense value and establishes instant authority. Readers who implement the book's strategies and see results are naturally primed to explore higher-ticket offerings.
This model shows how a low-cost, high-value info product can be your best top-of-funnel asset. It filters for highly motivated leads who have already bought into the methodology, making the jump to premium services feel like a natural next step, not a cold sale.
Key Insight: A well-crafted book can be your minimum viable product. It educates your market, builds trust, and qualifies leads at scale, acting as an automated, self-service entry point into your entire business ecosystem.
Actionable Takeaways
Package Your Expertise: Turn your core methodology into a low-cost e-book. Use it to build an audience and generate leads for your more expensive services or software.
Use the "Sample" Strategy: Just like Apple Books, offer a free chapter or section of your resource. Giving a taste of the value demolishes purchase friction.
Make Your Content Searchable: Whether it's an e-book or a knowledge base, ensure your content is easily searchable. This skyrockets its utility and makes it a go-to resource.
Website: https://books.apple.com/us/book/product-led-growth/id1501909300
7. Barnes & Noble (Product-Led Growth book)
For teams that prefer a physical resource to guide their strategy, the Product-Led Growth book at Barnes & Noble is the essential starting point. While not a digital platform, this book is a foundational "product" that delivers massive value. It’s the definitive guide by Wes Bush, offering a step-by-step framework for building a successful product-led business. It's one of the most accessible product led growth examples you can find.
This resource stands out by providing a comprehensive, static reference that teams can share, mark up, and revisit. The convenience of a major retailer like Barnes & Noble means easy access, complete with product details, a full table of contents, and reviews to help you vet it before buying.
Strategic Breakdown
The book's availability on a mainstream retail platform is a brilliant product-led tactic. It uses a low-cost, high-value physical product to introduce the complex PLG methodology to a massive audience. This strategy turns a traditional retail channel into a top-of-funnel entry point for Wes Bush's wider educational ecosystem.
By making the core concepts accessible for the price of a book, it vaporizes the barrier to entry for learning about PLG. It educates potential customers at scale, building authority and trust long before they ever consider a bigger investment.
Key Insight: A physical book can be a powerful, low-friction product that serves as step one in a larger customer journey. It captures interest from a wide audience and acts as a lead magnet for more advanced, high-priced digital offerings.
Actionable Takeaways
Create Your Industry "Bible": Write the definitive guide on a core topic in your industry. Offer it as a low-cost book to establish authority and attract a qualified audience.
Use Retailers as a Channel: Leverage major online retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble to distribute your foundational content and reach audiences you couldn't otherwise.
Build a Tangible Team Resource: Buy physical copies for your product and marketing teams. Create a shared knowledge base to ensure everyone is aligned on your PLG strategy.
Website: https://www.barnesnoble.com/w/product-led-growth-bush-wes/1136613800
Product-Led Growth: 7 Examples Compared
Resource / Provider | Complexity 🔄 | Resources / Cost ⚡ | Expected outcomes 📊 | Ideal use cases | Effectiveness ⭐ | Key tip 💡 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ProductLed | Low — self‑paced masterclass; advisory adds complexity | Low–Medium — free masterclass/playbooks; paid advisory tiers | Actionable PLG frameworks, templates, and starter playbooks | Small teams wanting example‑first learning and a free entry point | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Start with the free masterclass; upgrade to advisory when ready |
Reforge | Medium–High — structured courses and cohort work | High — paid membership, team plans, time investment | Deep operator‑led models and repeatable growth frameworks | Teams needing advanced upskilling and repeatable playbooks | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Use team plans and SSO to scale learning across roles |
OpenView Partners | Low–Medium — consume reports and apply insights | Low — many free, data‑rich reports (some gated) | Data‑backed benchmarks and funnel metrics to emulate | Benchmarking, metric‑driven strategy and case study reference | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Leverage annual reports for concrete funnel benchmarks |
Pendo (Product‑Led Hub) | Medium — content plus product tooling setup | Medium — free tier available; product integration improves results | Practical how‑tos plus ability to test in‑app guidance and PQLs | Teams that want to prototype and run in‑product experiments | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Pair articles with the free product to prototype in‑app flows |
Gainsight (PLG Index) | Low — download report and run self‑assessment | Low–Medium — free index/report; PX tooling is commercial | Benchmarked PLG maturity, gap analysis across acquisition→retention | Org‑level benchmarking and stakeholder alignment | ⭐⭐⭐ | Use the interactive self‑assessment to show internal gaps |
Apple Books (e‑book) | Low — read-only e‑book | Low — one‑time purchase; best on Apple devices | Canonical, case‑based PLG reference with searchable text | Individual study or quick example lookups on Apple devices | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Use searchable text to quickly extract examples and templates |
Barnes & Noble (book) | Low — purchase and receive physical/e‑book copy | Low — purchase; shipping or in‑store pickup options | Physical reference good for team libraries and annotation | Teams preferring printed books for sharing and annotation | ⭐⭐⭐ | Buy hardcover for team circulation and note‑taking |
Your Next Move: Turn These Examples into Your Growth Engine
We've explored a unique set of product led growth examples—not by dissecting SaaS tools, but by analyzing the very resources built to teach the PLG methodology. From Reforge's deep dives to Pendo's data-driven playbooks, a clear pattern emerges: true product-led growth is an educational process, both for your users and your team.
Successful PLG strategies aren't accidental; they are meticulously designed. These examples teach us that the foundation isn't just a great product, but a great product experience that guides users to value. The core lesson is that the product must become the primary engine for acquisition, activation, and retention.
Synthesizing the Core Lessons
Across all these resources, three pillars stand out:
Value First, Monetization Second: Every example, from ProductLed’s masterclass to OpenView’s reports, hammers this home: deliver a tangible "aha!" moment before you ever ask for a credit card. Your first job is to make the user successful.
Data is Your Compass: You can't guess your way to PLG success. Tools like Pendo and Gainsight exist because you need hard data to understand user behavior, find friction points, and spot expansion opportunities.
Onboarding is Forever: PLG reframes onboarding not as a one-time checklist, but as an ongoing, context-aware process. The goal is to continuously guide users to new features and deeper value as their needs evolve, turning initial activation into long-term advocacy.
Your Action Plan: Choosing and Implementing Your PLG Tools
Inspiration is cheap. Execution is everything. Here’s how to turn these insights into action:
Map Your User Journey: Before touching a tool, whiteboard your ideal customer’s path. Where do they find you? What’s the first value they must experience? Where do they get stuck? This map reveals the biggest gaps your new PLG tool must fill.
Define Your "Why": What’s your #1 objective right now?
Acquisition? Focus on tools that help create viral loops and freemium models.
Activation & Onboarding? Prioritize in-app guidance tools (like Pendo) to improve user success.
Retention & Expansion? Look for solutions that provide user health scores and identify upsell triggers (like Gainsight).
Start Small, Iterate Fast: Don’t try to implement a complex system overnight. Pick one critical weakness from your journey map, choose a tool that solves that specific problem, and measure the impact. This lean approach lets you learn and adapt without massive upfront risk.
Ultimately, the best product led growth examples prove that this strategy is more than a go-to-market tactic; it's a company-wide philosophy. It aligns every team—from engineering to marketing—around one goal: helping the customer win through the product. Your next move is to take that philosophy and embed it into your own growth engine, one tool at a time.
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