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 Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

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.
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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
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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
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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/


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