68: Vijay Iyengar: Unbundling PLG and why BI tools are not good for analysis

When is PLG just a fad? Vijay Iyengar, Senior Director of Product at Mixpanel discusses with me about the misconceptions around PLG and the role of analytics in driving business growth and why first principles is in our field the only thing we have.

Do PM’s really need to have a basic understanding of data and how it is stored and analyzed with LLMs being the norm? Why business intelligence (BI) tools are not the answer. 

Which key metrics and questions are correct to start with if you’re trying to get your data under control?

Takeaways

• PLG is not suitable for every business
• Business intelligence (BI) tools are good for consumption and reporting, but not for analysis.
• Data quality is a challenge, and engineers need to care about data and be involved in tracking.

Sound Bites

• "There's no best practices the way there are in other fields. Like it's all being written. It's all first principles."
• "There's plenty of businesses that can monetize much better and grow much better focusing on a different segment of the market where PLG isn't the appropriate sales motion."
• "Core root analysis, just following people around this is very, very underappreciated."
• "BI tools are good at consumption. It's good when you've predefined a set of metrics and dimensions and you want to push that out for general consumption."
• "Reporting is great to just keep a pulse on things, but nobody ever found an insight from reporting or nobody ever found something that's needle moving from a report."

Chapters

03:23 The Relevance and Overrating of Product-Led Growth (PLG)

05:15 Finding the Right Sales Motion for Your Business

09:28 The Importance of Tracking and Analytics in Sales Motions

13:44 Focusing on Churn and Retention for Sustainable Growth

22:14 Understanding the First Week Experience and Power Users

26:27 Understanding Data in Product Management

27:52 Limitations of BI Tools

29:19 Challenges of Data Quality and the Need for Engineers to Care

31:44 The Role of the CTO and CPO in Driving Data-Driven Decision-Making

46:34 Getting Started with Data Analysis: Focusing on Key Metrics

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