In this live Q&A, the hosts discuss how to turn a free tool into a paid offering that achieves product‑market fit. They stress that product‑market fit is a multi‑year journey often involving pivots, and recommend using analytics platforms like Amplitude to pinpoint the features that deliver the most value. Those high‑value levers become the basis for pricing, illustrated with freemium models such as SparkToro’s limited free searches and HubSpot’s locked‑behind‑upgrade functionalities. The conversation then shifts to career‑focused advice: for personal branding on LinkedIn, live video, short videos, and carousel posts generate the greatest reach and engagement; for product‑manager job seekers, creating mockups, PDFs, or video walkthroughs that demonstrate concrete ROI for a target company is an effective foot‑in‑the‑door strategy. The session wraps with a standard call‑to‑action encouraging likes, subscriptions, and comments.
Chapters
from Jesse Hernandez. When building a free tool, what's the best way to create a paid offering with product-market fit?
Well, I feel like those are two separate things. So let's talk about when building a free tool, what's the best way to create a paid offering with product-market fit? So I think you have to figure out product-market fit. I don't think you can just say you're gonna build a free tool. So maybe I'm not sure I'm understanding the question correctly, but, you know, the whole product-marketing fit thing, it's, Neil and I talked about, you know, the journey for a successful, company, right? Usually it's a 2 to 3 year journey to figure out product market fit. And oftentimes you might be pivoting quite a bit, right? So that's one thing. What you got to realize then is when you're using something like, when you're building that product, what you got to find out using a tool like Amplitude, Amplitude allows you to see which features people are using the most and which people are clicking on the most. Then you're going to be able to derive where people are getting the most value from. And then from there you can figure out, okay, these levers are the people are pulling the most. So these are the most valuable.
So I'm going to price based on these.
And then I might give people like SparkToro, for example, they give 5 free searches. That's their freemium version. So if you know that the search is, is the main piece of value, then you kind of, you know, tie things to that, right? So HubSpot would be a good example of this because when you try to add a new sales pipeline or when you try to add, you know, specific new, um, you're trying to do other things within HubSpot, they have all these locks within the system that prevent you from, um, prevent you from doing other stuff unless you upgrade, right? So the first thing you have to figure out is what are your value metrics? You can use a tool like Amplitude. And then from there, you can kind of make this, you know, key decisions on, you know, where to go with your product next. But the whole product-market fit thing, um, you know, we're talking, that's usually a 2 to 3 year journey.
Got a couple career-oriented questions here. So, uh, Varenya DV asks, I'm planning to write blogs on marketing, startups, work life, and everything related to work/jobs on LinkedIn. My aim is to market myself on LinkedIn. Do you have any suggestions?
Writing posts helps, uh, quotes and images help, but the best thing to do on LinkedIn if you want to market and you're trying to give advice, go live on LinkedIn. You'll get way more reach and you'll get way more engagement. The second thing you want to do is create videos. So going live and videos has the biggest impact from what we've seen on LinkedIn than anything else. Now you could do things like carousels like Eric and I are doing, or you could do things like Posting quotes and memes and screenshots, but from a reputation standpoint, a branding standpoint, revenue standpoint, the videos, whether it's live or just posting videos, tend to do the best.
During this challenging time for everybody, how do you, how do you basically impress potential hiring managers and let them know, like, especially in the case of a product manager, So like a foot in the door technique.
They're not working there, but they want to get their foot in the door?
Exactly.
I would, I would go and break down something in their business, go do something, whether it's a mockup, a PDF, writing down paragraphs or video explaining how they can do something more efficient or better, or whatever it may be that your role is, and break down the process on how they can implement it and do it. Um, and that shows, you know, put the, the proof is in the pudding, right? If you can show people that you can provide ROI, they're much more likely to hire you.
If you enjoyed this, let me know what you think in the comments and don't forget to check out the next video over there. Hit the like button, helps us grow. Hit the subscribe button as well. And then we'll see you tomorrow.
