2023 PLG Rising 40 Awards

Celebrating the next generation of product-led growth (PLG) innovators, powered by OpenView and PeerSignal

SHOW ME THE WINNERS

About the PLG RISING 40 
We all know the household names in PLG. Now we asked: who’s next?
The community crowd-sourced 400+ nominations for the coveted golden popcorn award. 
Winners were hand-selected by 20 PLG experts. All raised less than $100 million in funding.
STATS SPOTLIGHT
Powered by Keyplay.io
3.5x
MORE LIKELY TO HAVE A COMMUNITY THAN SAAS PEERS
78%
ARE ACTIVELY HIRING AS OF JUNE 2023
69%
HAVE AN ENTERPRISE OFFER TO COMPLEMENT THEIR PLG MOTION
Titanic
The Cutting Edge
A League of Their Own
Apollo 13

PLG poster child

Critics agree that Aha! is the poster child of efficient growth. The product management software company surpassed $100 million in ARR with only 110 employees – they’re an outlier that stretches what’s possible for mature PLG businesses. Aha!’s efficiency is fueled by an inbound free-trial machine, well-loved product, and transparent pricing.

The ultimate PLG/scale relationship

Our PLG expert judges rave about Tango’s self-serve product. The company grew from 0 to 200,000 users in a mere 14 months. At one point, 40% of Tango’s traffic was coming from TikTok – and this wasn’t even driven by Tango in the early days.

From underdog to unmatched

Zeplin, helmed by co-founder and CEO Pelin Kenez, managed to turn a small seed investment into a big PLG success story. This under-the-radar company’s products now reach more than 5 million users. The academy of experts highlights Zeplin’s land-and-expand motion where large enterprise accounts such as Amazon or Salesforce initially start using Zeplin as a small pod of users before rapidly increasing the footprint across the company.

One giant leap for PLG kind

The Supermetrics team built this PLG rocketship from an unlikely location: Helsinki, Finland. The business generates north of €50 million ARR, has 500,000+ users, and is the No. 1 add-on for marketing data in both the Google Sheets and Google Data Studio marketplaces. The (marketplace) reviews are in – and they help fuel a powerful growth engine.

THE WINNERS


Disclaimer: The materials contain current and former OpenView portfolio companies. For additional information including a full list of portfolio companies, please visit our website.

Special thanks

We’d like to give a standing ovation to the experts who helped us select this year’s winners. They come from a variety of backgrounds and provide valuable perspectives across the B2B landscape.

Francis Adanza
James Allgrove
David Apple
Samuel Bakouch
Eric Brinkman
Holly Chen
Leandra Fishman
Jeanne DeWitt Grosser
Jill Guest
Greg Klausner
Tom Klein
Rebecca Kline
Christopher Miller
Hien Phan
Yuhki Sakai
Ari Schapiro
Niraj Shah
Lauren Sheppard
Ben Williams
Deleted Scenes

We’d like to give special recognition to other startups who are on the cutting edge of PLG tactics but didn’t make the final edit.

Air: Product-led marketing marvel
Chargeflow: Usage-based pricing pioneer
June: Community crowd-pleaser
Parabola: Product-led sales star
Userflow: Bootstrapped blockbuster
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