Four Leverage Buckets: Where to Start Your PLG Motion
Choose your first PLG investment among acquisition, activation, conversion, and retention by fit and leverage
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
After the funnel audit, Qu frames the decision of where to start as choosing among four buckets: acquisition, activation, conversion, and retention. Each has a default fit rule — activation is the common starting point for most B2B products, conversion is fast and revenue-adjacent, acquisition suits products with built-in virality, and retention (the 'messy middle') is deliberately not where you start. The PQL/PQA sales path is a heavier variant of conversion to sequence later.
Origin
Hila Qu's decision framework from her PLG advisory work, distilled from her two-part Lenny's Newsletter series on adding a PLG motion.
Core principles
- 01Activation is the default starting point because most B2B products aren't built for quick usage
- 02Conversion is fast and revenue is close — always worth testing
- 03Product-led acquisition works only if the product has inherent viral/collaboration loops
- 04Retention is the messy middle — important but not a first move
- 05The PQL/PQA sales path is higher-effort; sequence it after activation and self-checkout
How to run it
- 1
Default to activation if unsure
Because B2B products historically weren't designed to get users to value quickly, activation is usually the highest-leverage first bucket. Define the aha metric, then design a warm-start experience to get more users there.
Pro tip Benchmark against Miro: signup asks a few targeted questions about your use case, then hands you a template so you're using the product within ~5 minutes.
- 2
Attack conversion for near-term revenue
Improve the self-checkout flow with experiments — this is revenue close to being booked. Make buying as easy as any e-commerce site.
Pro tip Check for localization gaps: one client found low success rates in India because their payment provider served that market poorly; adding a payment option immediately raised success.
Watch out Don't lose anyone already in checkout — run many experiments because these are the closest-to-revenue users.
- 3
Invest in acquisition only with built-in virality
Product-led acquisition is a great first bucket if your product has collaboration/viral loops — inviting teammates spreads it (Figma, Airtable, Calendly).
Watch out Without an inherent viral loop, product-led acquisition is not a strong starting point.
- 4
Sequence the PQL/PQA sales path later
If you want blended product-led sales, set up the data signals and customer criteria that flag better leads — but only after activation and self-checkout are working and you have reasonable user volume.
Watch out Jumping to PQL/PQA before activation and checkout work is 'jumping too fast and jumping too ahead.'
- 5
Treat retention as later, not first
Retention matters enormously but is the messy middle — it plays out over long, uneven timespans with less immediate leverage. Don't start here.
Pro tip Often the biggest lever for retention turns out to be activation anyway, so improving activation is a win-win.
In the wild
Qu points to Miro: signup asks very limited, targeted questions ('Are you here to brainstorm? Develop a roadmap?'), then quickly hands you a template. In about 5 minutes a user goes from website to signup to actually using a template to do the thing they came for.
→ Time to value achieved fast — Qu treats this as the standard all PLG B2B products should follow for activation.
A client's data showed India had a very low checkout success rate. Investigation revealed their chosen payment solution didn't support that market well; they added another payment solution.
→ Immediately much better success rate — a conversion-bucket fix that recovered revenue already at the checkout stage.
Common mistakes
Starting with retention
Retention is the messy middle — long, uneven timespans with customers retained-or-not at any moment. Starting there wastes the fast, high-leverage wins available in activation and conversion.
Jumping to the PQL/PQA sales path too early
The product-led-sales path is high-effort and needs data signals, customer criteria, and reasonable user volume. Building it before activation and self-checkout work means jumping ahead of the foundation.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders/growth leaders with a working-but-imperfect funnel deciding which single area to invest in first
Not ideal for
Teams still missing foundational components (free product, checkout) — build those before choosing a leverage bucket
From the transcript
“Personally, I'm a big fan of finding leverage. Like I think doing growth is always about finding leverage.”
“Activation is actually a common good starting place for most B2B software”
“I call retention the messy middle. It's actually a messy part of the entire funnel”
“the product led acquisition is a great place to invest if you have a collaboration workflow”
“they found that India has very low success rate... the payment solution they choose actually doesn't support that market well, and they added another payment…”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to adding a PLG motion
Hila Qu (Reforge, GitLab)