Founder @ Valubyl | Product-Led Growth Advisor

Currently building Valubyl: The leading PLG agency for B2B SaaS onboarding and activation.

We’ve helped 30+ B2B SaaS companies turn free signups into paying customers by upgrading their self-serve onboarding experience.

We’ve partnered with world-class PLG teams like Instantly, Signwell, Freckle, Gymdesk, PromptLayer, Rosie... and delivered insane results like:

👉 Databox: activation up from 30% → 48%
👉 Stockpress: free-to-paid conversion up from 10% → 31%

If you want more paying customers from your freemium or free trial, let’s chat.

Feel free to send me a DM, email at yaakov@valubyl.com, or book an intro call with the link above.

Yaakov Carno

Woah, I just went to cancel my Lovable subscription and this blew my mind 🤯 Check out this new plan they surface in their downgrade flow:

For the last few days, I've been debating if I should downgrade. 

It's not that I don't love the product, I do, it's just that a couple of my projects are already live and I don't expect to make big changes for the next few months. 

Paying for a tool that’s just sitting there didn’t feel great.

The only problem is that I didn't want to my live sites to get that "made with Lovable" badge again...

But I decided I'd just downgrade and deal with it.

Then this happened 💸 They hit me with a "Lite" option... 
(and no, you won't find it on their pricing page)

Same 5 credits/day as their free plan, giving you just enough room to make small tweaks... BUT they also allow you to keep all your custom domains and remove Lovable branding.

In so many products, these are the exact levers used to block downgrades and force users to stay on higher plans.

But here... it actually felt like a really thoughtful gesture.

Not sneaky. Not manipulative. Not a 27-step downgrade maze.

AI credits are still new for consumers. This felt like Lovable was saying: 
"Hey there, I totally get that you're still figuring out how to use and budget a tool like this, so here's the perfect way we can keep building together."

And it was actually exactly what I needed.

Whatever happens with these monetization experiments, one thing is clear:

This is a company that's obsessed over what their users want and need, and it shows in every part of their product.

Founder @ Valubyl | PLG activation systems for self-serve B2B SaaS

20 hour journey ahead with our 2 year and 7 month old kiddies. Wish us luck 😬✈️

Goodbye Australia 🇦🇺

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This is what happens when you prioritize removing friction over creating context:

Teams obsess over reducing friction and removing steps, but most of product design challenges are actually about helping people understand.

Users arrive mildly interested and slightly confused about what your product does. If they don't quickly understand what they're looking at or why it matters, they'll just leave.

Making it easier to do confusing things just gets people to leave quicker.

Your goal is to make it to make it obvious why each step matters and how it gets them closer to solving the problem they came for.

That's the best way to speed up time-to-value.

One of the things I love most about what I do is working with incredible teams around the world. The flip side is that most of it ends up being virtual.

Nothing beats working with great people in person.

So good to spend time with the klaro team in Sydney.

Thanks for having me over Niklas Olsson, Kogulan Baskaran, Farley Schaefer!

2026 marks our 4th year building Valubyl. It's been an epic journey working closely with 30+ B2B SaaS companies on PLG, and a real privilege partnering with industry leaders like Instantly, Databox, Signwell, Freckle, and many more.

In theory, self-serve onboarding should be easier than ever. AI can guide, generate, explain...
But in reality, activation has become even more fragile.

Products are more powerful. AI started showing up everywhere.

And yet most onboarding experiences still struggle to make that power feel concrete. We’re in an abstract phase of AI adoption where capability has moved faster than understanding.

Teams are struggling to onboard people into AI-powered products, and the old playbooks aren’t holding up.

What’s interesting is that our niche hasn’t changed at all.

We’re still focused on product-led, self-serve SaaS. Still obsessed with onboarding, activation, and getting people to real value.

But how we work, and how much of the outcome we’re able to own, has changed a lot.

Over the last few years, it’s become obvious that activation is a real and painful challenge for teams, from super early-stage companies to PLG leaders at scale.

We see the same outcomes again and again: users signing up with intent but never reaching value, onboarding that’s missing or vague, and teams left guessing where momentum actually breaks.

So heading into year four, we’re evolving in a very intentional way. Same hyper-niche, just much deeper execution.

We’re taking ownership of activation systems across onboarding, lifecycle, and monetization. Not just advising, but helping teams actually build, connect, and run them.

And alongside that, we’re going to start sharing a lot more of the work itself.

Not so much polished thought leadership. No hot takes.

Real, practical assets pulled straight from client work. The stuff teams are actually struggling with right now: making value obvious, shortening time-to-value, fixing quiet drop-offs, and turning self-serve usage into something that sustains a business.

Same core belief as always: product value is the growth strategy.

Value first, revenue follows.

If you’ve followed along so far, thank you! 😁
If you’re new here, welcome 👋

Happy 2026!

User activation is completely different for AI products. 

In traditional PLG, activation followed a familiar path: 

Setup → Aha → Habit. 

You helped the user get started, reach their first moment of value, and eventually form a repeatable pattern of success. 

Today, activation happens inside a continuous conversational cycle: 

Prompt → Context → Output → Action → Habit. 

Each stage feeds the next. Each interaction teaches the system, and the user, what to expect. 

What used to be setup and “aha” moments now happen almost simultaneously, the second a user starts typing. 

Let's break it down: 

👉 Prompt: The new “signup” 
This is where users declare intent. A great prompt experience helps them express what they want without friction or doubt. 

👉 Context: The hidden setup. 
Some products infer it from behavior or connected data; others still ask explicit onboarding questions to better personalize results. Both paths work if they make the outcome more relevant. 

👉 Output: The moment of truth. 
The first result must be both impressive and useful. “Wow” gets attention, but relevance drives retention. 

👉 Action: The bridge. 
The most important first step in the actual product. Real activation happens when users apply what they got: editing, publishing, sharing, or integrating it into their workflow. 

👉 Habit: The loop compounds. 
Each prompt teaches the system and the user, tightening trust and shortening time-to-value. 

The first principles of activation haven't changed. 
Time-to-value and retention are still the critical metrics.

✅ And the goal remains: help users reach value, quickly and repeatedly, in a meaningful way that keeps them coming back.

What's changed is how that value is delivered. 

And AI products need to adapt.

Gururaj Pandurangi

CEO & Founder (Acquired by Zscaler)

Building ThriveStack: Making PLG Easy by Left-Shifting Growth

3x Founder: Engineer turned entrepreneur, exited 2 product startups ($2-10m ARR) and 1 cloud consulting company (150+ cloud consultants). Building my 3rd one, ThriveStack.

My previous startups were partner-led and sales-led. With significant investments in Sales & Marketing (S&M budgets were 60% company spend). Overtime I discovered that product-led startups were out-competing and getting deployed faster than us.

I realized that "We are in the age of self-service". Buyers and Users prefer self-discovery over sales interactions.  Building a self-serve product is very different than building a traditional sales-led product.

Now, building ThriveStack, an modern AI-enabled platform to enable Self-Serve for B2B companies, allowing their users to Signup, Try and Buy their products w/o (less) Sales conversations.

Founder

A packed restaurant with nobody getting served on time is not success.
You might get a full house once or twice, but they won’t come back.

Product Activation works the same way.

Signups increase.
Accounts get created.
Dashboards look healthy.

It feels like growth.

But activation is not about entry.
It’s about value being delivered.

A user signing up is like a customer walking into the restaurant.
Activation happens only when they’re actually served.

That’s why real activation isn’t:
 • Logins
 • Account creation
 • Traffic spikes

Real activation is:
 • Onboarding completed
 • Setup and integrations done
 • First success milestone achieved
 • Time to value met

What actually fixes this:
 • Activation is tracked through clear journeys and milestones, not assumptions
 • Time-to-value is visible, so teams know who’s progressing and who’s stuck
 • Account activity is directly tied to value delivery, not vanity usage

Before scaling acquisition, fix activation.
Before celebrating signups, track whether users are reaching value fast enough.

Track where your accounts actually reach value here 👇
 https://lnkd.in/gMFkGTdT

Building ThriveStack: Driving success by left-shifting growth

𝟭 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟰𝟱 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗶𝘁 "𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻." 
(Live demo link in the comments)

In B2B SaaS, the gap between "Sign up" and "Value Realized" is where churn lives.

As Wes Bush from ProductLed keeps saying : 
"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 '𝘈𝘩𝘢!' 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳."

Using the ThriveStack Full Journey View, A Growth Intelligence Product (attached), we can see exactly how this account moved through the product:

1️⃣ 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 (𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗦𝗲𝘁𝘂𝗽): ✅ Activated
They smashed the 1-day goal by finishing in under 2 hours. Result: Activated. 

2️⃣𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 (𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻): ⚠️Friction
They hit a bottleneck. They’ve been at "Setup" for 2 days. Result: Struggling. ⚠️

The data tells a clear story: The onboarding is fast, but the reporting setup is friction-heavy.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: 
Don't just measure if they activated. Measure how long it took them to get there—and where they stalled immediately after.

What is the "1-hour goal" for your product? Let’s swap metrics in the comments.

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