← Routes to Market
PLG

Product-Led / Self-Serve

Best fit

Developer-facing, cloud-native, compliance-light tools where the buyer can evaluate before talking to a human and activate before paying.

GTM reality

Needs obvious activation, fast time-to-value, and a free/freemium edge that respects the security buyer (no telemetry games). Sales motion attaches at the team-of-teams threshold.

Deal economics

Very high leverage at scale; very high CAC efficiency once activation works. The first hire on the GTM side is usually a growth engineer, not an AE.

Common mistake

Bolting PLG onto an enterprise category that buyers will never adopt without a procurement process. PLG fits the tools that one engineer adopts; not the tools the CISO must approve.

Fits category types
  • AppSec
  • API security
  • SCA
  • developer-facing compliance
  • lightweight DSPM