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.

Head of Product Growth at Penpot.app | marioaraujo.co

I'm the product leader who makes B2B products actually sell. Proven at $10B scale (OutSystems: $0→$17M self-service, $80M influenced), validated at Series A (Softr: 3x revenue), and replicated pre-revenue (Penpot: enterprise pipeline from Spotify, US Postal Service, Swiss National Bank, US Army).

I spent 16 years at OutSystems - developer → trainer (70+ classes) → PM → growth leader. Teaching developers globally taught me to spot friction others miss, then build systems that eliminate it.

THE APPROACH:
I'm not a growth marketer optimizing campaigns. I build product growth infrastructure that bridges product, community, and sales for complex technical products.
Mentored by Elena Verna (3 years), advised by Andrew Capland, currently working with Wes Bush at ProductLed advising enterprise clients (Google, Mozilla, Boomi).

WHO I WORK BEST WITH:
Technical audiences - developers, data scientists, designers. Building complex B2B and need growth systems that compound? Let's talk.

Mario Araujo

After 2 years at Penpot, I'm moving on.

I joined because I was curious about open source. How do you build a sustainable business around something you give away for free? Turns out, it's harder and more interesting than I expected.

We doubled the number users. Built growth infrastructure from scratch. Launched the path to monetization. I learned more about community, product, and empathy than I have in years.

Kaleidos has this saying: "Once you're in, you're in. Ex-kaleiders are kaleiders." I believe it. The team is one of the most human, thoughtful groups I've worked with, so in a way I'm not really leaving.

I'll continue advising B2B SaaS companies alongside Wes Bush and the ProductLed team. And I'm exploring what's next as a full-time role.

If you know a company building for technical audiences that needs a Product/Growth leader that works well at the intersection of product, community, marketing, and sales - I'd like to hear about it.

Happy new year 🥂

P.S. Special thanks to Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, Izabela Pejkic, Robert Tomas Johnston, Paula Tienza, Madalena Melo, Andrés González, Yamila Moreno, Marta Ardizone Marín, Almudena Sanz Moya, Carolina Portugal, Toni Dominguez, Sonia Sánchez López, Elena Alcalde Rueda, Elena S. and Laura Kalbag

Mario Araujo 

Product & Growth Leader | B2B | PLG Expert | Developer-focused products

Most PLG advice for developer tools is wrong.

The standard playbook says: create a linear onboarding flow, add checklists, guide users step-by-step to their "aha moment."

In fact, there isn't such a thing as a single aha moment for developer tools. Take n8n for example, maybe it's about getting data from somewhere, or maybe it's about scheduling a workflow, or maybe it's about moving data from here to there...

But here's what I've learned building for developers:

Developers don't want to be guided. They want to explore.

Checklists? They ignore them.
Tours? They will hit skip.
Onboarding emails? Marked as spam even before reading them.

Sales emails? 🤬

The problem isn't that developers are difficult users. The problem is we're applying frameworks to a completely different mindset.

Developers are builders. They learn by doing, breaking, and fixing. They have multiple use cases in mind from day one, not just the single "primary" use case we've optimized for.

Instead of fighting this behavior, successful developer tools embrace it:

→ Multiple entry points into the product
→ Self-service docs with great search
→ Examples and templates over step-by-step tutorials

Stop trying to herd developers through your funnel.

Start building products that let them explore their way to value.

For all developers and builders out there? Do you prefer guided tours or figuring it out yourself?

taplio

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