Before PLG Had a Name: How Product-Led Growth Quietly Started in 2011
When I first joined MFG.com in 2011 as a full-cycle AE, the phrase “product-led growth” didn’t exist yet. We had a sales team, we made calls, and we closed deals—but something different was happening behind the scenes.
We had visibility.
The platform showed us how buyers and suppliers were using it: which parts they searched for, what materials they specified, and even which machines they were running. That product telemetry gave us a window into their operations before a single phone call. Instead of cold pitching, we were calling with precision—knowing exactly what that manufacturer needed and when.
That wasn’t called PLG back then. But that’s what it was.
It was data-led selling before anyone branded it.
The Early Foundations of PLG
Product-Led Growth, as a term, took shape years later. Atlassian and Slack popularized it. Figma and Notion perfected it. But the principles existed long before the playbooks.
At its core, PLG is about one thing: the product does the selling.
The modern form relies on in-app onboarding, frictionless trials, and self-serve upgrades—but the concept is rooted in telemetry. You build software that surfaces user intent. You analyze where value happens. You then remove friction between discovery and expansion.
That’s what we were doing in 2011 at MFG.com—using behavioral data to guide human outreach and make sales calls more strategic. Today, that same thinking is automated through feature flags, user scoring, and in-app prompts.
The tech has changed. The mindset hasn’t.
How PLG Evolved from a Sales Assist to a Full Growth Engine
The next decade turned PLG from a motion into an operating model.
Dropbox proved that usage could scale faster than outbound.
Canva and Figma showed that viral collaboration is the new top-of-funnel.
Notion turned onboarding into activation science.
Each of these companies built systems where telemetry wasn’t an afterthought—it was the growth model.
As RevOps matured, telemetry moved from marketing analytics to revenue infrastructure. The most effective GTM teams today treat product data like oxygen. Usage patterns drive lifecycle segmentation, customer health, expansion playbooks, and even pricing strategy.
But most RevOps agencies still don’t touch PLG.
They’ll optimize lead routing, campaign attribution, and SDR handoffs—then completely miss the product side.
That’s a huge blind spot.
Why Product Telemetry Is Gold
Telemetry is more than analytics. It’s the connective tissue between product, sales, and success.
Done right, it tells you:
Which users are adopting features fastest
When accounts are showing intent signals before renewal
How activation metrics predict conversion or churn
But implementing it correctly isn’t as simple as wiring Segment or Pendo. It’s about sustainable data design—knowing which events matter, where they belong, and how to connect them to revenue outcomes.
That takes operational experience. The kind built from years of seeing how sales, success, and product intersect.
The Future of PLG Is Hybrid
Most SaaS companies won’t be 100% PLG. And they shouldn’t be.
The future is hybrid PLG—where sales, marketing, onboarding, and product operate on shared telemetry. The product attracts and activates; sales helps expand; RevOps orchestrates the system that makes both scale.
That’s the approach I’ve been refining since MFG.com and now bring into my work with Growth Harmony.
Because while PLG may be the buzzword today, the truth is simple:
I’ve been doing it since before it had a name—and the best part is, we’re only getting started.
