Question Page

What resources would you recommend to read or study to develop your PLG skills?

Kevin Garcia
Anthropic Product Marketing LeaderMarch 13

I recommend you:

  1. Learn how to get your own insights

  2. Learn what's worked for others

  3. Develop your own taste

You'll notice most of these lean toward taking action versus "required reading." That's on purpose. The best way to learn PLG is by doing it.

Learn how to get your own insights

Build up your skills in collecting and synthesizing data

  • Book a 1-hr lunch with someone on your data or product team to walk you through how they measure product usage today.

  • Read 10-50 customer support tickets and develop a point of view on the most common issues customers are facing.

  • Pretend you're the target user. Record yourself going through the signup and onboarding flow. Identify 2 things you'd want to change. Do the same for a competitor.

  • Ask a question about the product funnel, then try to find the answer. That might mean building a new dashboard. Or customizing an existing one. Or learning SQL.

Learn what's worked for others

See how other's do it, apply what makes sense

  • Ben Williams (The Product-Led Geek) published a great post with all my favorite PLG thinkers, including my all-time favorite: Lenny.

  • Don't just copy what they do. Focus on how they problem solve. What steps do they take? What questions do they ask? When do they call something a success (or not)?

Develop your own taste

Become comfortable having a point of view

  • Take inventory of every major product update from last year. Pretend your CEO has asked that you help the team understand which update was the least impactful to customers. Research. Write up your findings in 500 words or less.

  • Research the 3 biggest customers (by revenue) you lost last year. Go deep on their history with your product. Really get a feel for where things fell apart. Write up your findings in 250 words or less.

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