Biro Florin

As a passionate Angel Investor, Serial Entrepreneur, and now a Podcaster, I am wholeheartedly dedicated to the world of startups and founders. Having spent over a decade immersed in the startup ecosystem, I've journeyed through a spectrum of experiences - from numerous failed ventures to building a successful business, Jexo, that was recently acquired.

Reflecting on my journey, I see myself as a misfit - a founder who faced countless setbacks and bouts of self-doubt before finally finding my path. This 'misfit' identity, coupled with my deep-rooted passion for helping others, inspired me to establish Misfit Founders. This initiative is an authentic and supportive community designed to empower founders and ease the feelings of 'out-of-place' syndrome common among many entrepreneurs.

In our community, we have a podcast that facilitates open, genuine discussions about the struggles and successes of entrepreneurship. As a host, I have the privilege of contributing my insights alongside those of my guests. Each conversation is unscripted and real, focusing on raw experiences rather than polished narratives. 👉 https://mf.show

Further, Misfit Founders extends beyond the podcast, encapsulating a vibrant WhatsApp community. This free-to-join group serves as a haven for founders, a space where they can share ideas, seek advice, and find support in a network of like-minded individuals. 👉 https://nas.io/misfits

I invite you to become part of this supportive community, and together, let's change the narrative around failure and success in entrepreneurship.

Podcast Host

Wes Bush

Product-led coach helping founders scale from 6 to 8-figures in product-led revenue. Author of the bestselling book, Product-Led Growth.

Over the last 8 years, I’ve worked hands-on with 400+ SaaS companies, helping them unlock $1B+ in self-serve revenue through Product-Led Growth (PLG).

Yet, right now, the failure rate for product-led companies is still far too high.

I’m on a mission to change that because I believe the world needs more product-led companies where you can try before you buy. 

This approach builds trust faster than any sales pitch ever could—after all, 97% of buyers prefer it. But, let’s be real, PLG isn’t easy.

That’s why I’m here to help in three ways:

➡️ Is PLG is right for you?

I wrote the bestselling book, Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself, to help you determine if PLG is the right strategy for your business. 

You can read it for free at ProductLed.com/Book—my treat!

➡️ What’s the best approach to scale up PLG?

After two years of research and working with hundreds of companies, I discovered the 9 essential elements that separate PLG success stories from the rest. 

I break it all down in The Product-Led Playbook.

You can grab a copy at ProductLed.com/Playbook, or watch my free masterclass to see the entire process in action: ProductLed.com/Masterclass

➡️ Ready to scale up?

If you’re ready to scale and need hands-on help, our ProductLed Implementers are here. They aren't consultants—they are experienced PLG operators who want to roll up their sleeves and work alongside your team to help you address your biggest growth bottleneck, whether that's getting more users to sign up, upgrade, or get to value.

Since we only work with a handful of clients at a time and guarantee growth, you must apply to work with us at ProductLed.com

Let’s turn your product into a growth engine and scale your business the product-led way. 🚀

CEO & Founder

We help you build a successful product-led business.

Start with our free ProductLed Masterclass 👉 productled.com

Had a great first day at the SAAS NORTH Conference!

Started off catching up with friends and colleagues - always one of my favorite parts of these events.

Then spent most of the day in conversations with founders who are a step or two ahead of where I'm trying to go. Getting their unfiltered takes, understanding what they're seeing that I'm not, picking up on patterns before they become obvious.

Also, Michael Litt's talk on "Why SaaS is Dead and the Rise of Results as a Service" was a standout.

This morning I hosted the official CEO run through Ottawa where 13 people showed up at 6:30 AM in the dark to run through the city. Shout out to everyone who came, and thanks to David Tyldesley for letting me organize it.

Later today, I'm running a session on AI x PLG. We're covering how to use AI to become more effective and how to apply it across your entire PLG motion: pricing, onboarding, expansion - all of it.

If you're here, come say hi.

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Co-Founder and CEO at Vidyard

Co-Founder of SAAS NORTH, TechExit.io, Tech Talent North and more...

#1 PLG Partner | Scale Your Revenue, Not Your Headcount | $1B+ Self-Serve Revenue Generated For Our Clients

Nicolas Mejia, MBA.

You can get PLG advice from me anytime now…WITHOUT spending thousands of dollars on consulting fee or waiting to find a virtual coffee spot on my calendar.

People want to learn from practitioners - the ones actually doing the work.

That's why thought leaders exploded in the last few years and there’s been a massive rise in podcasts, blogs, newsletters, etc.

But it comes with a constraint…

These creators can only provide personalized feedback to a tiny fraction of people who want it. Maybe 5-10 virtual coffees per week before they burn out completely.

Casey Winters built SuperMe to break this constraint.

Once you upload your content and frameworks, anyone can now ask you specific questions and get real answers based on your actual expertise. You help thousands of people without burning out.

I uploaded everything I know about PLG - all the frameworks from helping 400+ SaaS companies scale.

Want my advice but couldn't get on my calendar? Now you can, instantly.

Try it: https://www.superme.ai/wes

There’s ZERO chance companies like Cursor, Lovable or any AI-native SaaS can scale at this lightning pace without PLG.

You can’t scale with AI alone. 

You need a strong product-led motion to power it.

Without a self-serve product experience and rapid time-to-value, these companies wouldn't be able to hit the growth rates we're seeing.

To put it simply,

AI is the rocket. PLG is the fuel.

Let’s look at the numbers…

Both Cursor and Lovable hit $100M ARR in under a year with explosive, largely through self-serve growth.

Could any sales-led SaaS company scale to $100M in under a year? Even with an elite outbound team?

No chance.

This kind of growth isn't possible without a product users can adopt immediately, a frictionless self-serve experience, and organic expansion loops.

AI removes friction from the product experience through faster workflows, better outputs, more intuitive interfaces. But PLG removes friction from everything else: onboarding, adoption, expansion, and monetization.

You need both.

AI-native companies that build without a PLG motion will hit the same growth ceiling that every other sales-led SaaS has hit. They'll need more reps, longer sales cycles, and heavier implementation.

All the old problems that PLG was designed to solve.

AI creates the capability.

PLG creates the velocity.

#1 PLG Partner | We Scale (and Sometimes Buy) SaaS Businesses | $1B+ Self-Serve Revenue Generated For Our Clients

JUST recorded what might be the most practical AI x PLG playbook out there with Aakash Gupta.

Aakash is neck-deep in AI tools every day, and he brought this framework that really crystallized things for me. There are two sides to the AI x PLG equation.

First, there's how AI transforms your actual PLG motion.

One of the biggest shifts I’m seeing is how time-to-value needs to drop to 1/10th of what it is today.

AI-assisted activation can analyze someone's domain the moment they sign up, infer their use case, and deliver value immediately.

Then there's pricing.

AI has real COGS, which changes everything. We're watching the shift from seat-based pricing to usage-based to outcome-based (eg: Intercom's Fin - they only charge when the AI actually resolves a support ticket.)

The second side is how AI makes you more effective as a practitioner.

Aakash walked through his entire stack - Claude Projects trained on his context, agent workflows handling everything from competitive analysis to marketing, prototyping tools that turn ideas into working demos in minutes.

The companies crushing it right now are doing 10x more because of AI.

All that said, I believe “taste” is the new moat because features are commoditized now.

Linear is the perfect example. They hit $1B valuation with "just task management" because they obsess over craft. Zero tolerance for bugs. That's what sets them apart now - not features anyone can copy.

If you're building a product-led SaaS, this conversation might be the most valuable 60 minutes you can spend this week.

Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gKpyF69T
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gUy3GkZM
Apple: https://lnkd.in/gPJuWmgb

Thanks for giving away all the sauce, Aakash!

If you’re a B2B SaaS debating which user recording tool to use, just go for Microsoft Clarity.

It does everything Hotjar does, but better - and it's completely free.

That sounds too good to be true, but after working with hundreds of SaaS companies, we recommend Clarity to every client at ProductLed.

Here's why…

Hotjar bogs down your website. It's clunky, it's expensive, and honestly, there's no good reason to use it anymore.

Clarity isn't just a basic free alternative.

There's real depth under the hood. You can feed it events, send user information, and run sophisticated analysis. It's a genuinely powerful tool that happens to cost nothing.

Companies default to tools they think are "industry standard" without questioning whether those tools actually work.

When you're trying to reduce friction in your self-serve funnel, the last thing you need is an analytics tool that slows everything down.

Note: This is not a paid promotion. Simply a tool we’ve been (and our clients too) loving.

I've watched dozens of SaaS companies kill their freemium motion in the past year.

They wonder why conversion rates are stuck at 2% and users ghost them after signup.

Our ProductLed Implementer 🔥 Anastasia Kudrow recently helped a client fix this exact problem.

They came to us with a classic early-stage issue. They'd tried everything - hard paywall trials, freemium, different combinations. Nothing was working.

Their users were browsing, exploring, getting some value from the free version... and then disappearing.

Sound familiar?

Here's what most companies get wrong about freemium:

They give away too much with no strategic friction.

Users can accomplish their goals entirely on the free plan. There's no compelling reason to upgrade.

They gate random features instead of desired outcomes
"Unlock advanced analytics!" "Get priority support!"

These don't create desire. Users don't lie awake at night wanting "advanced analytics." They want to accomplish something specific.

They use generic upgrade messaging
"Unlock the full experience" - what does that even mean?

Users need to know exactly what they're getting and why it matters RIGHT NOW.

We worked with this client to build a strategic freemium + trial hybrid model.

Here are the key changes we made:

→ Lock outcomes, not features.
We identified what their power users desperately wanted. That's what went behind the paywall.

→ Create new-user urgency.
A first-time-only incentive that only appears at specific moments when users are already expressing intent.

→ Let users explore freely, then create strategic friction.
Free users can browse and experience value even with the free plan. But when they want more of the thing they actually came for, that's gated.

The results?

☑ 64% conversion rate on the upgrade trigger 
☑ Trial volume increased 3X in the first month 
☑ 42% trial-to-paid conversion rate

Most companies overthink the model and underthink the execution.

They debate "should we be freemium or free trial?" for months.

The model matters less than what goes into it.

- Can users experience meaningful value before you ask for money? 
- Do they understand exactly what they're upgrading to? 
- Is there a clear reason to act now?

Get those right and your model will work.

Get those wrong and no model will save you.

AI is changing PLG in ways most companies haven't figured out yet.

Aakash Gupta and I just spent an hour mapping out the specifics - what's actually changing and what to do about it.

Look, the PLG fundamentals haven't changed.

You still need a great free trial or freemium model. You still need strong activation.

The difference is what's possible within that framework now.

Take activation.

We used to accept that it takes days or weeks for users to get value. You sign up, go through tutorials, configure settings, invite your team, and eventually you hit that first moment of value. 

That timeline made sense when software was static.

AI compresses this. 

When someone signs up, you can analyze their domain, understand their likely use case, and surface personalized value immediately. Not days later.

Pricing is shifting too.

Most PLG companies still use seat-based pricing because that's what worked. 

But AI introduces real COGS that didn't exist before. Every interaction costs money. This is pushing pricing toward usage-based and outcome-based models.

Aakash pointed to Intercom's Fin as an example - they charge per resolved support ticket, not per seat or message volume.

Earlier, features used to create moats. 

You'd build something differentiated and have plenty of time before competitors caught up. That window is basically gone now. Anyone can see what you built and replicate it fast.

What's hard to copy is taste. 

Aakash used Linear as the example - they hit $1B valuation with task management software because of obsessive craft.

Zero tolerance for bugs. Perfect details. Competitors can copy their features but not their taste.

We got into the tactical side too.

- The specific tools worth using for PLG teams.
- How to think about AI-assisted expansion.
- What the actual workflow looks like when you're using AI to move faster.

Full episode: https://lnkd.in/gKpyF69T

So pumped to have Esben join ProductLed!

We've got some epic stuff in the works for product-led founders.

Going to be fun!

Entrepreneur in Residence at ProductLed - Co-Founder of Userflow and Cobalt

I guess my Linkedin hiatus is over.

I am happy to announce that I have joined Wes Bush and the amazing ProductLed team as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

With Userflow we scaled to $4.6M in ARR with a team of 3 using PLG and in my view PLG is still the #1 way for SaaS B2B businesses to build for profitability and scale.  

While AI has made it significantly easier to implement, companies are still often struggling with building a solid PLG foundation. That is why I am excited to join ProductLed and help more SaaS businesses become truly ProductLed

More to come from me soon.

#PLG #Productled #SaaS

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Biro Florin

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Wes Bush's LinkedIn Performance

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