There are no new ideas
Why the best growth strategies are rarely “new”
There are no new ideas, just new flavors for great execution. Andy Boyd, CPO at Appfire, has been doing PLG since before it had a name. While leading growth at IBM Watson, it wasn’t “product-led” anything.
They were focused on what drove business outcomes.
Here’s what Andy learned from building one of IBM’s first growth teams and why the best growth strategies are rarely “new.”
To see this whole conversation, check out Andy’s episode on LaunchPod:
PLG: A fresh label for proven GTM fundamentals
Long before “PLG” became a trend, Andy’s team at IBM was doing the work to grow the sign-ups and paid users. No buzzwords, just outcomes.
💬 “In retrospect, we were the growth team. But the work that we were doing was really PLG before the term PLG was coined.”
They focused on small, iterative improvements that compound over time:
Activation
Retention
Conversion
Referral
That sounds like PLG, no?
A great product with bad GTM still dies
For IBM Watson, Andy’s team was responsible for managing signups for Watson’s API platform. They doubled signups by moving the demo front and center on the page, improving official docs (devs were using it before signing up), and reducing signup friction.
It was still the same product.
Their developer customer base just didn’t care about marketing; they wanted to use the product.
“Developers don’t want to be sold to — they want to use and buy. They were reading the docs, looking at inputs and outputs, before even signing up. The docs were the pitch.”
There are no silver bullets
When other IBM teams asked what their “secret to success” was, they expected some silver bullet. But it was just compounding wins over time.
💬 “If I showed you everything we did, you’d be uninspired. It was just good practices done consistently.”
This approach became the blueprint for Andy’s trainings across IBM, which helped launch 20 new growth teams. The framework was always the same:
Pick a key metric
Map the user journey
Run experiments
Learn, iterate, repeat
Whether you call it PLG, growth hacking, or something else, what matters is obsessing over users, solving their problems, and shipping fast.
Don’t get distracted by shiny labels. The best growth leaders know:
Fundamentals never go out of style
Execution beats buzzwords
And customer-first thinking always wins