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Gary Yau Chan - Building PLG for SOC, HIPAA, ISO
Growth Product, SEO & Viral, Retention, Growth Loops | 26x Hackathon Winner
Gary Yau Chan is a seasoned product and growth professional currently serving as the Product Lead for PLG (Product-Led Growth) at TrustCloud.1 He has extensive experience in scaling companies through product-led strategies and growth initiatives.
Professional Experience
At TrustCloud, Gary has been responsible for:
- Launching the company's 0 to 1 Product-Led-Growth initiative
- Creating the Product-Led-Sales playbook and meeting upsell quotas
- Experimenting with pricing packages, monetization, and bundling strategies1
Prior to his role at TrustCloud, Gary held several notable positions:
- Head of Member Growth (Director of Growth Product) at Inspire from 2018 to 2022, where he grew the network from 1.5M to 2.5M+ members and managed a team of growth product managers1
- Startup & Product Growth Consultant from 2016 to 2022, helping startups build high-tempo growth processes and frameworks1
- Brief stint at Google in 2016, working on an MVP for a web version of Primer1
- Co-founder and Products Lead at Oz Content from 2014 to 2016, where he built a B2B Content Marketing SaaS tool1
Education and Certifications
Gary holds degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:
- BS in Industrial Management Engineering
- M.Eng. in System Engineering and Technology Management1
He has also completed several professional certifications, including courses in A/B Testing, Growth Modeling, Advanced Growth Strategy, and Product Strategy from organizations like Udacity and Reforge.1
Current Focus
Gary is currently focused on building PLG (Product-Led Growth) strategies for CSMs (Customer Success Managers) and QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews).1 His recent work at TrustCloud involves improving their PLG free-to-paid conversion rate, which he noted was initially at 1%.2
Gary shares insights and experiences on various platforms, including LinkedIn and Twitter, where he discusses topics related to PLG, product strategy, and compliance automation for startups.34
Highlights
What PLGs don’t talk about ⁉️ 🤨 Building trust and reassurance with your customers ...
WTF is Trust and Reassurance? 🤔
Naturally, your PLG motion sparks curiosity and a bit of skepticism from potential customers.
At TrustCloud, we saw these concerns up close and personal. People wondered, “Is a ‘free’ service even legit?” and “What's the catch?” It's a trust issue. Also they want reassurance: “Who else is using this tool?” “Does it do what it says?” “When am I gonna start coughing up cash?” No Jokes!! These are exact lines from customers 😰
So, how did we tackle this? Our PLG team came up with a method that nails both trust-building and giving reassurance.
🤝 Building TRUST: 🤝
We rolled out what we call a “superhuman onboarding” process. Check out Rahul Vohra 's Youtube talk on PMF. We have a 30-minute onboarding call with each of our freemium customer, jumping right into the action with our freemium software. Not a demo call. Not a qualification call. But instant access to the freemium software. This breaks skepticism immediately. Because we mean business (!) in transparency. ⭐️
During these onboarding calls, we talked about our “WHY.” It’s all about our mission to make compliance software affordable for startups that can’t spring for pricey solutions like Vanta or Drata. Putting a face to the name and explaining our business model? It kills any skepticism and conspiracy theories about selling data or whatever.
🤝 Providing REASSURANCE: 🤝
After over 1,000 onboarding calls, our PLG team’s pretty much heard it all. We’ve turned that knowledge into a trove of resources—videos, interactive content, docs, FAQs—that tackle common questions head-on. 📚
We’ve also smartly sorted our clients by industry, pulling in testimonials from freemium users. This lets newcomers see how similar companies thrive with our product. Plus, we’re super transparent about our pricing—a rarity in the compliance industry. 🤯
🎯 The IMPACT 🎯
By doing the "unscalable" - personalized onboarding calls - we've created a powerful learning flywheel. Each interaction provides new insights that we quickly incorporate into our process, transforming us into a highly efficient PLG machine. ⚙️
This approach has proven invaluable in overcoming the hesitation and skepticism many customers feel when about a freemium software. Our PLG team has built with the theme of trust and reassurance into our activation and onboarding. We believe its an essential part of the PLG strategy. We been able to convert skeptical prospects into champions. Just search TrustCloud in Reddit, those are not our comments!
Want to learn more? I attached my previous posts here about "What's the 'golden ticket' to growth? 🎫". I also write daily on my PLG journey. Stay tune!
#freemium #productmanagers #productledgrowth #PLG #PLS
"How to break through the noisy market?"
For product leaders at a B2B SaaS startup, it can be overwhelming, especially with little-to-no budget.
So, what's the secret sauce to stand out! against incumbents?
We went all-in, fully embracing Product-Led Growth (PLG) to differentiate ourselves.
We launched FreeSOC2(.)com, aiming to democratize compliance access.
Here's how we got started:
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Launch Something the Market Desperately Needs and Make it Free: We kicked-off with FreeSOC2.com to make compliance accessible to all.
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****Did it hit a nerve with Market Validation??? ****: Within two months, we welcomed hundreds of sign-ups.
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**** Follow the golden rule: Give Upfront Value****: Like Slack and HubSpot, we offered our SOC 2 readiness tool for free, inviting startups to join us with zero hesitation.
Then:
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??? a whole bunch of things happen ???
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Success!
This method not only helped us dismiss market skepticism but also spun a self-sustaining growth engine.
By giving value upfront, we earned trust, making it easy for users to move from free to paid services.
We have launched PLG for almost two years ago.
Follow along. I plan to write about our PLG journey every day moving forward.
#PLG #SaaS #StartupSuccess
