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

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. — 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 — In this episode, we cover: [3:41] Merci’s path to Head of Product and Growth at Slack [4:42] What Merci learned from being a VC that helps her be a better founder [6:50] How to tell a compelling story [9:43] What most people don’t know about Slack [10:27] Why Slack hasn’t created a consumer/social product [15:14] How Slack innovated the PLG motion [17:14] Slack’s early growth strategy [19:57] Slack’s activation point [22:10] Why it’s important to find connectors within a company [26:40] Lessons from optimizing Slack’s onboarding flow [32:12] Most common mistakes in going PLG [35:56] Signs you can go PLG [38:10] PLG vs. bottom-up [40:23] Importance of day-zero value in your tool [42:17] When to bring in your first salesperson [44:47] How to hire amazing people [50:21] Storytelling and Slack’s culture [51:04] How and when to build a growth team [52:08] How to build a more diverse team — 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/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe