Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
Merci Grace (ex-Head of Growth at Slack) on PLG, interviewing, storytelling, building a diverse team, hiring salespeople, building a growth team, and much more
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Show Notes
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Merci Grace has been a founder, an investor (at Lightspeed Ventures), head of product and growth (at Slack), and is now a founder again (Panobi). She’s also one of the co-founders of Women in Product, and Fast Company named her one of the Most Creative People in 2017.
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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Dovetail: https://dovetailapp.com/lenny
• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/startups
• Whimsical: https://whimsical.com/lenny
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In this episode, we cover:
[] Merci’s path to Head of Product and Growth at Slack
[] What Merci learned from being a VC that helps her be a better founder
[] How to tell a compelling story
[] What most people don’t know about Slack
[] Why Slack hasn’t created a consumer/social product
[] How Slack innovated the PLG motion
[] Slack’s early growth strategy
[] Slack’s activation point
[] Why it’s important to find connectors within a company
[] Lessons from optimizing Slack’s onboarding flow
[] Most common mistakes in going PLG
[] Signs you can go PLG
[] PLG vs. bottom-up
[] Importance of day-zero value in your tool
[] When to bring in your first salesperson
[] How to hire amazing people
[] Storytelling and Slack’s culture
[] How and when to build a growth team
[] How to build a more diverse team
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Where to find Merci:
• Panobi: https://panobi.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merci/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/merci
• Website: https://mercigrace.co/
• Women in Product: https://www.womenpm.org/
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