Elena Verna has led growth at some of today’s most successful B2B businesses, including Miro as CMO, Surveymonkey as SVP of Growth, and now at Amplitude as interim Head of Growth. She’s also worked closely with over a dozen companies on growth and product strategy, including companies like MongoDB, Clockwise, and Netlify (where she sits on the board of directors). Elena is undoubtedly one of the smartest people on growth strategy in the world.
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Where to find Elena:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenaverna
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Persona: https://withpersona.com/lenny
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In this episode, we cover:
00:58 Elena’s career path
03:59 How did Elena go from an analyst at Safeway to Head of Product at Amplitude?
11:38 The path to advising
13:30 Elena’s most fulfilling and most challenging positions yet
17:00 What’s changing in B2B growth?
19:49 Consumerization examples
21:48 What exactly is “product-led growth,” and how can you apply it at every stage of growth?
23:15 Advice for founders starting a company
26:36 Layering sales-led and product-led
28:27 Why does PLG often get crushed when you move upmarket, and how do you avoid this?
35:00 Advice for starters going to market
36:38 Why product-led is the future of sales
38:57 Defining product-led sales vs sales-driven
41:41 Why is freemium the way to go, over trial?
51:34 Why you should hire internally for your first growth hire
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