The Go-to-Market Mismatch

You're building a B2B software product. You've been hearing a lot about product-led growth (PLG) success stories - companies like Figma, Slack, and Notion that grew virally with users signing up from the website, trying the product, and eventually converting to paid plans.

Your product is expense reporting software. Employees use it to submit expenses, but the finance department is the one who evaluates vendors and makes purchasing decisions. The CFO controls the budget and has specific compliance and integration requirements.

You've built a beautiful self-serve signup flow. Users can create an account with their credit card and start using the product immediately. You've optimized the onboarding, added viral referral mechanics, and made it dead simple to invite teammates.

But conversion is terrible. People sign up, try it, like it even - but very few convert to paid plans. When they do buy, it's after a long sales cycle that doesn't go through your self-serve flow at all.

Meanwhile, your competitor (who has a clunkier product and requires talking to sales) is winning deals and growing faster. Their product is objectively worse, but they're succeeding.

Your investors are pushing you to 'fix the funnel' and optimize conversion rates. Your team is focused on making the product more viral.