The question is not which model you prefer, it is who signs and how much they are risking. If one person can start using the product on a card without asking anyone, you can be product-led. If a buyer needs security review, procurement and three other people to agree, no amount of free trial removes the salesperson. Most companies end up with both: self-serve to create usage, sales to convert the accounts where that usage got big. Pick based on your actual buyer's approval path, then be honest that adding the other motion later is a second company-building exercise, not a toggle.
4 resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked.
Instead of theorising about PLG versus sales-led, it lays out what 30 real companies actually did, segment by segment. It is the fastest way to find the two or three companies whose shape matches yours.
From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky ~15 min read
Open lennysnewsletter.com →Cuts through the acronym soup of PQL, PQA and MQL and says plainly when a company should add sales on top of self-serve, and what data you need first. The best explanation of the hybrid motion most companies end up with.
On Lenny's Podcast by Elena Verna ~70 min
Open lennysnewsletter.com →Casado's argument that the modern B2B winners combine bottom-up adoption with a sales layer is the clearest framing of why 'which motion are we' is usually the wrong question. Uses Dropbox, Twilio and Atlassian to show the shape.
From Andreessen Horowitz by Martin Casado ~15 min read
Sorts SaaS businesses into serve-me, guide-me, show-me and enlighten-me based on product and buying complexity, using Freshworks and Chargebee as examples. A genuinely useful way to check whether your sales motion matches your buyer.
From SeedToScale (Accel India) by Ankit Agarwal ~12 min read
How what gtm actually is reads from a different seat.
