At OpenView

OpenView’s Most-Loved Posts and Podcast Episodes From 2020

December 21, 2020

Despite a whole lot of challenges and uncertainty, 2020 has been a great year for OpenView—and for product led growth companies. Looking back helps us realize just how much we accomplished this year, and we hope you’re going through the same process with your own work. We have no doubt you’ve got a lot to be proud of.

To close out the year, we wanted to share our most-loved posts and podcast episodes of 2020:

Our top posts

Talking Growth Frameworks with HubSpot’s Chris Miller
Chris explains a couple of key growth-related frameworks that HubSpot uses: the “Three Ds” framework for solving growth problems, and the Learn/Collect/Apply framework for setting up effective audience segmentation.

Notion’s Marketing Secrets for Small Teams with Big Dreams
Camille Ricketts, Notion’s Head of Marketing, talked to us about the power of being human, the importance of storytelling and design, and the two biggest mistakes companies make with content development.

Priceless Pricing Advice from the Smartest Operators in SaaS
If you’re owning pricing for the first time, this post is for you—it’s full of brilliant advice from experts at SurveyMonkey, Intercom, Aspireship, Zenefits and more.

The New Saas Metric You Should be Tracking
Give this metric its own headline in your next investment deck, executive dashboard or monthly update.

Let’s Stop Calling Churn a Customer Success Problem
Ultimately, making customers succeed is a business-wide responsibility that requires contributions from each function. OpenView’s Kyle Poyar goes over why you should move customers from monthly to annual plans, along with seven more ways to move the needle on churn.

How to Pair Sales and Self-Service for Maximum Impact
OpenView’s Sam Richard consulted with experts from InVision, Wistia, HubSpot and more—and it turns out they’re “splitting the funnel” to keep their teams laser-focused on the leads that make sense for their business. Use Sam’s findings to rethink how you’re applying sales resources at your own organization.

Amazon’s Kristin Graham On How to Build, Maintain and Scale a Strong Culture
Whether you’re just starting to build your company’s culture or you think it might be time for a realignment, Kristin has some brilliant tips.

Put the Freemium vs. Free Trial Debate to Rest
One of the questions we hear most often from product and growth owners is: “Should we start with a free trial to generate urgency for the prospect, or just go freemium?” The answer, of course, is that it depends. Find out how to make this decision with confidence.

The 3 Pillars of PLG: Insights from Calendly, Zapier, Deputy, Pendo and More
OpenView Partner Mackey Craven lays out the characteristics that make product led growth businesses work so well—with examples from PLG leaders on when, where and how to use the three pillars.

Our top podcast episodes

🎧 Developers, Developers, Developers… and Marketing

Many VCs and startup pundits say the key to success is simply winning the “hearts and minds” of developers in the community, but developers are notoriously allergic to traditional marketing. So, what’s the secret? Francesca wrote the developer experience playbook at companies like MongoDB and Snyk, and now she’s sharing her best practices with the BUILD community.

🎧 Airtable and the Low-Code/No-Code Future of Software
Airtable’s Co-Founder and CEO Howie Liu unpacks the hype and substance of the low-code/no-code movement, the challenges of building a mass market platform with a hugely diverse customer base, and how to nail a self-serve strategy in the enterprise.

🎧 Mental Health is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Highspot co-founders Robert Wahbe and Oliver Sharp talk about how to build during a downturn. Some of our favorite takeaways:

⏰Don’t waste time forecasting, focus on optionality
💰Invest in core differentiators
🏃‍♂️Mental health is a marathon, not a sprint

🎧 An Inside Look at How Datadog Reached $500M in ARR (and Counting)
Alex Rosemblat, Datadog’s longtime VP of Marketing, gives us the details on how they’ve been able to generate so much revenue with their go-to-market strategy.

Bonus: Our annual reports

The 2020 SaaS Product Benchmarks Report
This 41-page report includes insights from CEOs and product leaders at over 150 SaaS companies, benchmarks on best-in-class freemium and free trial conversion funnels, and expert advice on how companies can layer in sales to drive growth.

The 2020 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks Report
This year’s report revealed surprising insights about what’s on everyone’s mind: How did COVID-19 and the economic downturn affect private SaaS companies? In short: It made SaaS companies even stronger. Get all the details—including data on founder attitudes, the adoption of PLG, and progress on executive diversity—in the full report.

Managing Editor<br>OpenView

Kristin joined OpenView after spending over four years at InVision managing their Inside Design publication and helping build brand love as chief storyteller, lead producer and editor. Before InVision, she co-founded the digital strategy agency Four Kitchens, spent several years in the restaurant industry as a chef, and was Editor-in-Chief of the nation’s largest college humor publication, the Texas Travesty, as an undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin.