A framework for growing bottoms-up (i.e. product-led) adoption in B2B products, along with a summary of commonly-used GTM strategies and sales models Originally presented at Open Core Summit 2020 by Vivek Saraswat (Venture Partner at Mayfield, Product Leader at Docker/VMware/AWS)

1. Hooks and Upsell: Bottoms-Up
Product and GTM Strategy
Vivek Saraswat
Venture Partner, Mayfield
Tweets: @theVSaraswat
Blog: viveksaraswat.com

2. My Journey

3. Mayfield’s Journey
Active
COSS Portfolio:
Exits

4. GTM 101

5. Wikipedia: “Go-to-market strategy is the plan of an organization, utilizing
their inside and outside resources (e.g. sales force and distributors), to deliver their unique value proposition to
customers and achieve competitive advantage...”
What is Go-To-Market (GTM)?
tl;dr GTM is:
• Get customers to understand the product (marketing)
• Get customers to use the product (distribution)
• Get customers to pay for the product (sales...and product!)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_to_market

6. Why Does This Matter?
Most B2B Startups:
Smart B2B Startups:
Build product Figure out how to sell it Iterate/pivot/start over
if it doesn’t work
Understand target
market, choose best-fit
GTM
Build product to match
the GTM strategy
Market + sell product
using the GTM strategy

7. But you don’t have to take my word for it...
“Deeply consider GTM as part of your product building process”
- Dave McJannet, CEO Hashicorp

8. GTM Strategies
Bottoms-Up Middle-Out Top-Down
Doers
Managers
Executives
Doers
Managers
Executives
Doers
Managers
Executives
Insertion + Usage
Upsell
Insertion
Upsell
Usage
Insertion + Upsell
Usage

9. Self-Serve Inside Sales Field Sales
Description Customer adopts and buys product with no
sales team required
Video/phone meetings from a stationary
sales team
In-person and video meetings from
traveling sales team
Lead Gen Inbound: Community + Advertising Inbound (Community/Advertising) +
Outbound (Prospecting)
Outbound: Prospecting, Relationships,
Referrals
Sales Cycle No touch, days/weeks Low touch, weeks/months High touch, months/years
Avg ARR $0-10k $10k-100k $100k+
Best For: Massive customer base, product with quick
time-to-value and organic virality
Large customer base, some product
friction, community upsell path
Small customer base with large budgets,
high product friction
GTM Fit Bottoms-Up Bottoms-Up, Middle-Out Top-Down
Sales Models

10. Bottoms-Up Strategy

11. Applying Bottoms-Up to Open Source
Chief Concerns
Solves a problem
Great experience
Chief Concerns
Supported
Team Efficiency
Chief Concerns
Centralized Service
CapEx/OpEx Reduction

12. Hooks and Upsell - A Bottoms Up Framework
First, focus on growing user adoption
• Solve a clear, burning pain point
• Target a massive user base
• Use a lightweight, viral insertion
Second, monetize via the buyer
• Understand what buyers really want
• Influence buyers to come to you
• Make the product easy to buy
Right Image: https://www.lifecoachhub.com/coaching-tips/are-you-missing-sales-by-not-upselling-or-cross-selling/804

13. Hook: Solve a clear, burning pain point
• Make your product “critical path”
• Automate a key, frequent, painful workflow
• Create a utility (fundamental architecture piece)
• Technical complexity != user value
• Examples
• Docker: Application dependencies management (workflow)
• PagerDuty: Incident response (workflow)
• Kafka: Event streaming (utility)
• Stripe: Payments API (utility)

14. Hook: Target a massive user base
• Easier to cultivate a community
• Better chance of WOM and upsell
• Doers > Managers
• Ideal: Devs, DevOps, Data Engineers
• Not Ideal: Execs, Security, PMs
• Buyer does not need massive base
• Snyk: User = Dev, Buyer = Security
• Hashicorp: User = Dev, Buyer = IT

15. Hook: Use a lightweight, viral insertion
• Lightweight = frictionless experience
• Free (as in beer)
• Out-of-box use case, quick time-to-value
• Organic virality
• Long-term sandbox (“Look what I built!”)
• Collaborative experiences
• Build up community champions
• Target known influencers in a community
• e.g. Docker Captains

16. Upsell: Understand what buyers want
• Tables stakes enterprise features
• Support, Single-Sign-On, Access Control
• You need them but won’t win deals because of them
• What really drives buyer value?
• Peace of Mind
• Collaboration
• Performance
• Insights
More on this: viveksaraswat.com/2019/11/putting-the-product-in-product-led-gtm.html

17. Upsell: Influence buyers to come to you
• Targeted Buyer Marketing
• Ads, website, events
• Content marketing -- specific use cases
• Use product features to create inbound
• e.g. Slack -- Paid Search History
• Have a clear division between free vs. paid.
• When you need to go outbound, identify potential buyers with significant
internal usage

18. Upsell: Make the product easy to buy
• Make the upgrade frictionless
• SaaS > Managed VPC > On-Prem
• Drop-in license key > swapping binaries
• Sell a paid version of your free product
• Minimize buyer re-education
• Facilitate self-serve/inside sales
• Price elastically to grow with value to customer
• e.g. per usage or # users

19. Bottoms-Up Summary
• Hooks: Focus on growing user adoption
• Solve a burning pain point
• Target a massive user base
• Use a lightweight, viral insertion
• Upsell: Then monetize via the buyer
• Understand what buyers really want
• Influence buyers to come to you
• Make the product easy to buy
• Key Early Hires:
• Product Strategy (product experience, free vs. paid, viral features)
• Product Marketing (user/buyer personas, value prop, content)
• Community Relations (outreach, engagement, growth)

20. Vivek Saraswat
Venture Partner, Mayfield Fund
Tweets: @theVSaraswat
Blog: viveksaraswat.com