Ashley Smith
Venture Partner, OpenView. On 1 show, 0 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Ashley Smith is a Venture Partner at OpenView. She advises companies on product metrics and growth indicators to secure funding and scale.
1shows
0appearances
15statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Ashley Smith said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Smith: PLG companies cannot grow without a full-featured free tier
“If you're trying to build a product-led growth company, and there's not at least something to give away for free that's a full-featured product, it's not gonna grow.”
Over half of GitHub's growth to $7.5B was entirely developer-driven
“Developer community drove a company after 10 years to a 7.5 billion dollar acquisition based on sharing. There was a lot of sales motion. We had an incredible sales enterprise enterprise sales team but over half that growth was 100% developer driven with no sa…”
Smith: Running GitHub without a CEO prior to Microsoft acquisition
“At GitHub, I was in the last 18 months coming into acquisition, which is a nightmare. But I was one of five people running the company. The CEO publicly stepped down and left it to us to take care of.”
Smith: Few companies reached a $7.5B acquisition via community like GitHub
“When you think about product driven growth, there are not many companies in the world that you can say a community has driven a company to a 7.5 billion dollar acquisition. More so than GitHub.”
PLG public companies grow at 35% versus 25% for traditional SaaS
“Faster growth rates. 35% versus 25% in SAS.”
Public PLG companies command a 10x EV-to-revenue valuation multiple
“Higher multiples. Enterprise value per revenue is 10 X. These are actual numbers you can dig into. I think they're actually higher now if you go look at the updated index. Which means your company's worth about two times more.”
Atlassian operates with customer success rather than traditional sales
“Atlassian famously does not have a sales team. They have a customer success team.”
Diligence calls easily flag whether a startup is truly product-led
“The way whenever I'm doing diligence in a company to tell if this is actually happening is I call their customers, and if the first thing the customer says is, well, there's some challenges, then I know it's probably not a product-led growth company.”
Self-serve onboarding and free tiers drive faster software growth
“The world's moving towards an easier model, which is throw a credit card in or don't get a free tier and just sign up and start going. That's how you can grow more quickly.”
Founders must define freemium boundaries early to avoid paywalling backlash
“If you're gonna build a company and you know you want a free tier, be very thoughtful in the beginning about what goes into that free tier, because it's really hard to email your customers and say, hey y'all, super sorry, we're taking that free thing you love …”
Building software solely for enterprise buyers ruins the user experience
“When you're creating the product just for the buyer, you get a terrible user experience, and it's just not a good thing for your team.”
Social media sharing strategies fail with developer communities
“It won't work with the developer community because we're kind of bratty and don't like being marketed to, but it works in some communities.”
OpenView coined the term "product-led growth"
“OpenView actually coined the phrase way before I was there.”
Adding a team invite button increased developer tool signups 10x
“There's a company in San Francisco that I'm advising, and they're a developer tool, because I work on developer software a lot, and they had no way to actually collaborate as a team, which to me is counterintuitive, but we put a little tiny button that says, i…”
OpenView writes $5M–$25M checks across 3–5 deals yearly
“OpenView does five to twenty-five million dollar checks, A, Bs, and Cs, three to five investments a year, and I have an entire expansion team that's like three times the size of the investment team that helps with pricing, packaging, hiring, messaging”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ashley's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SAASTRLEDGER | Venture Partner, OpenView | 0 +1 | 15 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |