Gitlab's playbook for running PLG and Enterprise motions with Justin Farris
Manage episode 474917479 series 3616185
In this episode of Unpack Pricing, Scott Woody, co-founder and CEO of Metronome, talks with Justin Farris, VP of Product and Monetization at GitLab, a DevSecOps platform.
They discuss how GitLab successfully unified product-led growth, pricing strategy, and core systems under a single leader. Justin (ex-Zillow) shares why treating pricing as a product feature—not just a revenue lever—has been critical to GitLab's success, how they maintain one transparent price book across both self-service and enterprise customers, and why their buyer-based tiering model drives alignment between product and go-to-market teams. Justin also discusses how GitLab balances PLG and enterprise sales motions, how they avoid the "Cheesecake Factory menu" problem when creating add-ons, and his perspective on emerging AI pricing models that go beyond simple consumption-based approaches.
FULL TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE HERE:
–
Follow:
Scott
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-woody-21677121/
Justin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinrfarris/
–
Check out:
Gitlab: https://about.gitlab.com/
Metronome: https://metronome.com/
–
Timestamps (Updated):
(00:00) Preview and Intro
(01:17) Justin's background at Zillow, journey to GitLab and current role
(03:28) Discussion on PLG vs. sales-led motions at Dropbox and GitLab
(06:02) Making PLG and sales partnership work - organizational structure
(09:03) Aligning growth and go-to-market teams through shared metrics
(11:02) Connecting product metrics to revenue impact and growth
(13:39) Advice for companies looking to unify PLG and sales motions
(14:39) Executive alignment: avoiding over-rotation to enterprise
(17:02) GitLab's buyer-based pricing model and transparent price book
(20:34) Pricing as core to product experience, not just a revenue lever
(23:02) Packaging strategy: good-better-best vs. add-on approaches
(26:22) Managing complexity: when to simplify product and pricing
(29:35) Feeding packaging research back to product strategy
(31:36) Testing new pricing models with limited availability products
(34:48) Product leaders as GMs: understanding commercial implications
(38:43) Everyone has opinions on pricing - finding alignment in organizations
(39:49) AI pricing trends: from co-pilots to new commercial models
(44:30) Buyer-based AI pricing and value-based models
(49:14) Learning from startups' pricing innovations
(50:27) Wrap
7 episodes