ThriveStack Product Review - ft. Kelson Warner, Head of Growth | Amplitude

Kelson Warner, the Head of Growth Engineering, emphasizes the necessity for a comprehensive self-serve infrastructure as a foundation for PLG SaaS products.

You may be familiar with the success story of the Amplitude Plus plan, which we discussed in a podcast with Katya Fuentes and Kelson Warner. We reached out to Kelson to get his thoughts on our product, ThriveStack, and its potential value for growth engineering roles, an area in which he has considerable expertise. He graciously provided written feedback, which we’re excited to share with you below.

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As an engineering manager leading growth at Amplitude, I've encountered numerous complexities in building scalable Product-Led Growth (PLG) solutions.

Here’s my review of ThriveStack and how it addresses these challenges with its comprehensive platform that enables self-service and PLG.

Why is it hard to build self-servable products?

GTM leaders often assume that a self-serve product will follow a simple path: end-users sign up, automatically enter a free trial, configure the product, and use it. They'll buy it if they like it; if not, they'll leave it unnoticed. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as illustrated below.

For Engineering teams, building a self-serve product involves implementing and integrating various disconnected technologies. This process is time-consuming and requires a highly skilled team. Owing to the substantial investments required, the development of self-serve capabilities is typically beyond the means of smaller or early-stage companies.

In Amplitude's case, it took a dedicated group of engineers more than two years to build and deploy such a system.

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My Review

Product Features and Functionality:

ThriveStack has built a robust product that caters to 3 different personas

1. BUILD
   Enabling Engineering teams to build Self-Serve products - think of building an application using the self-serve infrastructure as a foundation.

2. ANALYZE:
   Enabling Growth/Data Analytics teams to Analyze Customer Journeys - think of PLG Analytics with out-of-the-box reports like Acquisition rates, retention rates, Product usage, etc.

3. DRIVE:
   Enabling GTM teams to Drive Growth - think- answers to questions like Can we upsell, expand, cross-sell the accounts to buy more

 I focused my review on 1. Build and 2. Analyze

ThriveStack offers robust self-serve capabilities like user authentication, registration, and tenant provisioning. These are surprisingly complex to build effectively, but ThriveStack simplifies them with low-code orchestrations. Additionally, the platform supports automatic user and company data enrichment, team invitations, up-voting, and pricing features, which are essential for driving virality and user engagement.

ThriveStack User Interface and Experience

ThriveStack offers a sleek, intuitive interface that simplifies navigation, enabling engineers and growth teams to quickly access key metrics and insights. The platform's user-friendly design provides clear previews, making it easy to understand the impact of changes.

PLG and Business Telemetry:

ThriveStack provides out-of-the-box reports for acquisition metrics, retention, and virality. Tracking these metrics can be challenging, even at an analytics company, so having them readily available is a significant advantage. The platform also supports both B2B and B2C use cases, handling authentication for you or integrating seamlessly with your existing systems.

Performance:

ThriveStack delivers reliable and efficient data processing, ensuring real-time insights that are crucial for rapid iteration and response to user behavior. This performance is essential for growth engineering teams aiming to optimize user experiences and drive continuous growth.

Support and Community:

ThriveStack offers excellent customer support and a growing community that shares best practices and insights, fostering a collaborative environment for growth-focused teams.

My Experience and Insights:

In my experience building PLG strategies, the process is often resource-intensive and complex. ThriveStack’s holistic approach to enabling self-service, providing PLG insights, and driving customer engagement is a game-changer. The platform's ability to support COGS-efficient SaaS and traditional SaaS models further underscores its versatility.

Despite being in its early stages, ThriveStack shows exciting potential for further evolution, particularly in offering advanced customization options for engineering and growth teams.

Conclusion:

ThriveStack is a powerful platform for engineering and growth teams focused on PLG strategies. Its advanced features, user-friendly interface, and reliable performance make it a valuable tool for building and scaling self-serve products. I highly recommend ThriveStack to teams looking to accelerate growth and enhance user engagement.

Learn how my team and I built the Amplitude self-serve platform

- Kelson Warner

Head of Growth, Amplitude
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelson-warner/