TL;DR

Elena Verna, who has led growth at Miro, SurveyMonkey, Amplitude, Dropbox and Lovable, frames growth as a set of levers (acquisition, monetisation and retention) that should form compounding loops rather than one-way funnels. Product-led growth, in her definition, makes the product itself the main driver of acquisition, conversion and retention. You do not need to be a SaaS company to borrow the core lesson: loops only compound if customers stay, so retention comes before scale. Non-SaaS businesses can adopt self-serve "aha" moments, usage triggers, owned and earned channels, and a growth model that is refreshed every year or two.

Who Elena Verna is and what she argues

Elena Verna is one of the best-known practitioners of product-led growth (PLG). Her own site lists growth, marketing and analytics leadership roles at Lovable, Miro, SurveyMonkey, Amplitude and Dropbox, advisory work with companies such as MongoDB, and her newsletter, Elena's Growth Scoop. Interviews from late 2025 describe her as head of growth at Lovable.

In an article for Amplitude, "Not All B2B Companies Should Be Doing Product-Led Growth", she defines PLG as a model in which the product is the main driver of acquisition, conversion and retention: users experience value, engage, and invite others. She is equally clear that it does not replace marketing or sales; it makes them more scalable.

"Product-led growth is a great strategy, but it's not a magic wand." — Elena Verna, Amplitude

In a webinar for Bain Capital Ventures portfolio companies, summarised by the firm, she set out a "motions × levers" model: three motions (product-led, marketing-led, sales-led) and three levers (acquisition, monetisation and retention). The aim, she said there, is predictable, sustainable and defensible growth, not one-off spikes. Funnels, in this view, are mainly useful to start loops; loops, in which outputs feed back in as inputs, are the engine.

Why retention is the foundation

Verna's loop thinking contains a simple dependency: a loop compounds only if the customers it produces stay long enough to create the next cycle's input. In her Amplitude article, engagement and habit loops are what turn an activated user into someone who invites colleagues and eventually pays. Without those habits, there is nothing to reinvest.

Her recent public comments put retention at the centre. A 2026 Growth.Talent write-up of her Product School interview reports her saying retention is her main focus and that it will decide which AI companies survive, because the switching costs that protected traditional software erode quickly. Another write-up of a Lenny's Podcast conversation reports her describing Lovable's fast release cadence as its retention strategy.

Other growth thinkers reach the same conclusion from different angles. Andrew Chen links viral growth directly to retention:

"The better way to understand virality is that it is inextricably linked to retention." — Andrew Chen

Brian Balfour treats flattening retention curves as a core signal of product/market fit. The shared message: acquisition spent on customers who leave is a cost, not growth.

Where PLG does not fit, in Verna's own words

Verna lists four situations where a company is not yet ready for PLG:

  • Sales and marketing are not yet predictable, which suggests a gap between what the company believes customers want and what they actually want.
  • Customers cannot reach the "aha" moment on their own without staff help.
  • The value needs explaining, as with "passive" products whose success means nothing visible happens.
  • Enterprise buyers, rather than end users, control the decision.

Many non-SaaS businesses tick at least one of these boxes. That is fine: the point is to borrow the principles, not the label.

What non-SaaS businesses can borrow: a seven-step playbook

  1. Define "retained" for your business. For a webshop it may be a second order within 90 days; for a B2B supplier, a repeat purchase order; for a service firm, a renewed contract. Pick one definition and track it by monthly cohort.
  2. Find the "aha" moment and shorten the path to it. Ask what first experience separates customers who come back from those who do not: the first delivery arriving on time, the first report a client can forward to their board, the first sample that passes a quality check. Design onboarding around reaching it quickly and without help.
  3. Build usage triggers, not just campaigns. In PLG, retention is driven by in-product usage triggers that bring people back, as an Amplitude overview featuring Verna describes. Outside software, the equivalents are reorder reminders timed to real consumption, service check-ins tied to usage, and status updates customers actually want.
  4. Let customers try the premium version first. Verna has written about the reverse trial: users get paid features for a set period and then drop to a free tier rather than losing access. A retailer or service business can apply the same logic with a time-limited premium tier, sample pack or upgraded service level that steps down rather than switching off.
  5. Prioritise owned and earned channels. In a 2025 Lenny's Podcast episode on growth tactics that never work, she argued against over-reliance on search ads and paid social, which rent someone else's audience, in favour of word of mouth, referrals and user-generated content that competitors cannot easily copy.
  6. Fix the base before hiring for growth. In the same episode she warned that growth teams amplify what already works but cannot rescue a product or proposition that customers do not value.
  7. Refresh the growth model regularly. She recommends evolving the growth model roughly every 18 months, investing around 20–25% of growth resources in new loops, and expecting 6 to 18 months before a new channel shows meaningful results.

Limits and common mistakes

  • Copying freemium blindly. Free tiers work when activation is self-serve and marginal cost is low. Physical products and labour-intensive services need a different trial design.
  • Measuring averages instead of cohorts. A stable overall repeat rate can hide that each new cohort retains worse than the last.
  • Optimising small details. Verna lists button-colour tests and one-off emails among tactics that rarely move results. Retention is mostly earned in the product and service itself.
Key takeaways
  • Verna treats acquisition, monetisation and retention as levers in loops; loops only compound when customers stay.
  • PLG is a powerful model but not universal; she names four conditions under which a company is not ready for it.
  • Non-SaaS businesses can borrow self-serve activation, usage triggers, reverse-trial thinking and owned or earned channels.
  • Define retention clearly, track it by cohort, and fix it before scaling acquisition.

FAQ

What is product-led growth in one sentence?
In Elena Verna's definition, PLG is a model where the product itself is the main driver of acquisition, conversion and retention, with marketing and sales still playing a role.
Can an e-commerce or manufacturing business be product-led?
Rarely in the strict SaaS sense, but it can adopt the principles: make first value easy to reach, build reasons to return, and let satisfied customers drive acquisition through reviews and referrals.
Which retention metric should a small business start with?
Choose the repeat behaviour that best reflects real value (second order, repeat contract, renewed subscription) and track the share of each monthly cohort that reaches it within a fixed window.

Sources

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