#20 Jonathan Kim, CEO @ Appuces, on leaving Hubspot to build the product-led growth platform

Scale or Die

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5+ y ago 36:01

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5 years ago, Jonathan Kim started Appcues to help product and growth teams create more relevant onboarding flows. Today, Appcues serves over 1000 customers and has grown to nearly 70 employees.

Jonathan’s idea all started at the end of his career at Hubspot, as he was having a conversation with his boss, the future founder of Drift, David Cancel.

In his words: “David Cancel comes over to my desk and he's like, ‘Hey man, like I've been seeing you and you're either at 110% and you're super passionate about something, or you're just not passionate at all.

We caught up a little later and you know I started talking about this thing. I was like, oh man, how about we crack this huge problem around user onboarding — and check out this landing page I built and it could be like a real product.”

And he said, "The way you light up about that, ‘that's what you're really passionate about.’”

He was like, "You should go do that." And I said, “Okay I guess you're right. I just kinda quit on the spot because I was so passionate about the problem.”

In this episode you’ll learn:

0:00 Introduction

1:28 What exactly is Appcues? How would you describe the business?

2:43 What allows you to build a great company with great products?

7:38 A growth strategy built on inbound marketing

14:59 How to approach pricing as you move up-market

20:48 Jonathan's thoughts on how companies should be thinking about on-boarding

29: 03 The Salty Six

47 episodes