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Product-led

Buyers sign up, use the product, and convert inside it, through a free plan or a trial, without talking to sales first.

Counts as evidence: The company describes self-serve signup or in-product conversion as a material source of customers.

Who ran it

  • Zoom · Free hosts and the invite loop · 2013 to 2016

    Product-led Primary

    Anyone can host on the free Basic plan, and free hosts upgrade for more functionality. The filings describe the free plan timing out meetings with more than two participants at 40 minutes. No filing dates when that limit began.

  • Zoom · The pandemic surge · 2020 to 2021

    Product-led Primary

    The free plan absorbed the surge. The 10-K says a significant portion of the increased usage came from free accounts that earned no revenue, while customers with 10 or fewer employees went from 18% to 36% of revenue.

  • Zoom · Enterprise platform and AI · 2021 to now

    Product-led Supporting

    Self-serve Online customers are still about 40% of revenue, with monthly churn down from 4.9% to 2.8%. The filings now describe online demand generation rather than viral demand.

  • HubSpot · Free CRM and the first freemium products · 2014 to 2018

    Product-led Supporting

    The free CRM was announced at INBOUND 2014 and made free to anyone in 2015, alongside free marketing products. In its fiscal 2016 10-K HubSpot said it was only starting to close business with little or no sales contact.

  • HubSpot · Free to Enterprise on one platform · 2018 to 2022

    Product-led Primary

    By 2018 the freemium model was big enough to pull average revenue per customer down. By 2021 the filing said freemium products close new business with little or no sales contact, no longer only starting to.

  • Cursor · Build for ourselves, launch in public · 2022 to 2023

    Product-led Primary

    A self-serve editor launched within months and improved in public. The team tracked paid power users, people using the AI four or five days a week, as the number to grow.

  • Cursor · Word of mouth compounding · 2024 to 2025

    Product-led Primary

    The CEO says the product spread from word of mouth: in a market where end users pick their tools, making the best product meant people heard about it. Two-month growth engineering sprints washed away next to product work.

How to run this channel yourself, step by step, is covered on the blog: read the guide.