Product-led models create deep loyalty and organic demand, providing a stable business foundation. Marketing-led models can scale faster but risk high customer churn and rising acquisition costs if the product doesn't resonate, leading to business volatility. An ideal approach blends both strategies for sustainable scale.

A more effective mental model than PLG vs. SLG is analyzing which activities create new demand versus which ones harvest existing demand. Both sales and product can serve either function. Creating demand is always the harder, more critical challenge for any revenue engine.

Product-market fit isn't just growth; it's an extreme market pull where customers buy your product despite its imperfections. The ultimate signal is when deals close quickly and repeatedly, with users happily ignoring missing features because the core value proposition is so urgent and compelling.

As software commoditizes, the buying experience itself becomes a key differentiator. Map the entire customer journey, from awareness to renewal, and design unique, valuable interactions at each stage. This shifts the focus from transactional selling to creating a memorable, human-centric experience that drives purchasing decisions.

The "build it and they will come" mindset is a trap. Founders should treat marketing and brand-building not as a later-stage activity to be "turned on," but as a core muscle to be developed in parallel with the product from day one.

Don't force your sales team to learn and sell a completely new product. Instead, integrate the new capability into an existing, successful product, making it "first" or "default" for that channel. This reduces sales friction and complexity, leveraging established momentum for adoption.

Jumping to enterprise sales too early is a common founder mistake. Start in the mid-market where accounts have fewer demands. This allows you to perfect the product, build referenceable customers, and learn what's truly needed to win larger, more complex deals later on.