From Community to Product-Led Sales:
How Snyk Disrupted Security

Ben Williams

VP of Product, Snyk

SECURITY · PLG

The Insight

Start Narrow, Go Deep

"The key for Snyk was not to go too wide, too early. Focus on nailing that initial use case for a specific community before expanding wider. You have to build a service and market it well to capture the opportunity."

Snyk started with a single persona: Node.js developers
Single context: securing open source dependencies
Narrow enough to build fast, wide enough to be viable
Then expanded language by language after proving the model

The Origin Story

How Snyk Disrupted an Industry

Market moment

Security was centralized, top-down, audit-focused. Developers hated the tools. Time for a different approach.

The realization

DevOps showed security could shift left. Developers increasingly cared about code quality and security. They just needed better tools.

Founded 2015 by Guy Podjarny, Danny Grander, Assaf Gilboa
Entry point: Node.js developers building apps with open source dependencies
The insight: 75% of modern apps are open source code; most vulnerable; least tested for security
The hook: "Do you have known vulnerabilities in your code?"
The distribution: Velocity Conference in Amsterdam + Node.js community evangelism
The product: Free CLI tool that scanned locally or in CI/CD pipelines

Why it workedProduct-led from day one. Developers loved it because it gave them agency and speed, not friction.

Growth Strategy

The Four-Team PLG Machine

Acquisition: SEO, content, community, developer evangelism
Activation: Onboarding, education, first-run experience
Monetization: Conversion loops, packaging, trials for teams
Data & Experimentation: Measurement, insights, PLS enablement

The sidecar moment

Built a free scan experience online (no signup needed). Result: huge traffic bump, higher intent users, better activation rates.

Product-Led Sales

The data and behavior insights from the product feed directly to the GTM teams. Sales knows exactly who's ready to convert.

People Architecture

Growing Great Growth Teams

Not every great engineer thrives in growth. Find people motivated by speed, iteration, and impact, not perfection.
Common vocabulary: everyone understands the growth process, data, and experimentation platform.
Start simple with education. Skip multivariate testing and sequential sampling early, it's a recipe for mistakes.
Align execution to strategy. If focus is activation, don't hire pricing experts, yet.

The core questionCan this person do their best work in a growth context? Most misalignments aren't about talent, it's about environment fit.

Framework

Vision & Mission for Growth Teams

📖Vision: The Nirvana StateWhat you're enabling →The imagined better future for users (5–10 years). Bound to your target market. Never mention your company or product.

🎯Mission: Your Unique PathHow you'll get there →The iterative approach you'll relentlessly pursue. Encodes your differentiating advantage (e.g., Snyk's unequal security intelligence).

🔗Alignment CascadeConnection points →Growth strategy ↔ product strategy ↔ company direction. Overlapping KPIs so teams swim in the same direction.

✨The Clarity TestEvery team member can answer →"Why am I here?" and "Why does my work matter?" If they can't, your strategy clarity needs work.

Based on Ben Williams' episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTube Follow @semanticben on X

GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE

07:27 What is Snyk, and what’s the current scale?08:45 Why Ben joined Snyk 09:29 How Snyk got their first 100 users 15:14 How Snyk used developer conferences and in-person meet-ups to launch 19:23 How Snyk used GitHub as a growth lever 23:50 Snyk Advisor, and other growth loops Snyk successfully used 26:56 Snyk’s failed attempt at self-serve monetization 31:21 How to win the hearts and minds of developers 33:38 How adding sales and marketing teams helped Snyk gain momentum 35:11 The evolution of Snyk’s growth team 37:26 Snyk’s key areas of growth and how Ben solved tension between teams 39:32 What is Snyk’s decision science team?40:59 Why Snyk has a growth marketer embedded on each team 43:39 The importance of having an amazing SEO person 46:21 Advice on building growth teams 51:32 Ben’s vision and mission framework 53:53 More on the growth process and experimentation 56:04 Using learnings as a path to impact 57:32 Growth strategy 1:02:26 Data in growth teams 1:06:33 How Snyk socializes learnings 1:10:05 How Snyk structures their product org 1:13:15 Free vs. paid features and how to approach trials 1:18:57 Activation milestones at Snyk 1:23:05 The most valuable tools for Snyk’s growth team 1:25:21 Lightning round

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