Lenny's Podcast

How Snyk built a product-led growth juggernaut | Ben Williams (VP of Product at Snyk)

Ben Williams is VP of Product at Snyk, an industry-leading security platform for developers, last valued at $8.5b. He’s also a product and growth advisor with over 20 years of experience building and scaling high-performing product and growth teams. Through product-led growth, product-led sales, and community, Snyk rapidly scaled and won over the lucrative developer audience. In today’s episode, Ben shares the successful growth levers that helped Snyk get started, all of the details of how Snyk has structured their growth, product, and marketing teams and set them up for success in terms of cross-collaboration—and also how their initial plan for self-serve monetization fell flat. We go into Ben’s many useful tips for product-led growth, including his thoughts on free vs. paid versions, trials, and how to build amazing growth teams. Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-snyk-built-a-product-led-growth — Where to find Ben Williams: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/semanticben • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/semanticben/ — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible: • Coda: https://coda.io/lenny • Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lenny • Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny — Referenced: • Snyk: https://snyk.io/ • Weekly Team Impact & Learnings Review Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GibNaJ4aONgp5Kg824NCionr1citHIDk3FLvMdkpX_Q/edit?usp=share_link • Monthly Group Impact & Learnings Review Template: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nQ18OTuRtc8urBnUWEObD_BlfdGDKlDDMFg8-G2GK7E/edit?usp=share_link • Experiment Plan Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18LiGXKphGe1tUpZCQA20i4bJqf-S3kDbYnY4Pls_9kQ/edit?usp=share_link • Vision & Mission Framework: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CiRwscu-50lBr2c7yRLY_zXVzv5DCnYqNnS5Au83WC8/edit?usp=share_link • Ed Sim’s newsletter: https://whatshot.substack.com/ • Tamar Yehoshua on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tyehoshua • Annie Duke’s website: https://www.annieduke.com/ • Growth loops: https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops • Brian Balfour on using learnings: https://brianbalfour.com/growth-machine/maximize-learning • Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/ • FullStory: https://www.fullstory.com/ • User Interviews: https://www.userinterviews.com/ • User Testing: https://www.usertesting.com/ • Sprig: https://sprig.com/surveys • Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/home/toolkit • How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470110120/ • Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/150112174X • Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078QSCM3V/ • This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race: https://www.amazon.com/This-They-Tell-World-Ends/dp/1635576059 • Acquired podcast: https://www.acquired.fm/ • Turning Red on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/turning-red/4mFPCXJi7N2m • Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm • Christine Itwaru’s blog: https://prodops.blog/ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Ben’s background (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 — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Ben WilliamsguestLenny Rachitskyhost

Nov 5, 20221h 31mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Inside Snyk’s rise: developer-first security and product-led sales engine

VP of Product Ben Williams explains how Snyk built a massive developer-first security business through product-led growth that later evolved into product-led sales. Starting with a laser-focused niche—Node.js developers securing open source dependencies—the founders leaned on community engagement, freemium access, and cleverly designed growth loops (e.g., GitHub PRs, SEO sidecar products) to drive adoption.
Early monetization attempts via self-serve struggled with larger companies, revealing missing enterprise requirements like governance features and broader language support; this pushed Snyk to add sales, expand product breadth, and better serve security leaders while keeping developers at the core. Ben details how they structure their growth and product orgs, define activation, and think about freemium vs. paid, trials, and PLG-to-sales handoffs.
Throughout, he emphasizes intentional growth strategy via acquisition/activation/monetization loops, strong data foundations, cross-functional growth teams (including embedded growth marketers and “decision scientists”), and a culture of continuous experimentation and shared learnings.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Start with a narrow, high-need developer niche and go deep before expanding.

Snyk began with a single persona, ecosystem, and use case—Node.js developers securing open source dependencies—which allowed them to build a truly compelling solution, validate product–market fit, and earn trust before branching into more languages and broader security coverage.

Design explicit growth loops into the product experience from the start.

Snyk’s GitHub integration creates Snyk-branded auto-fix pull requests that both deliver value and act as acquisition and engagement loops, while programmatic SEO products like Snyk Advisor and free security education content continuously attract and convert developers without heavy manual marketing.

PLG alone isn’t enough in enterprise security; you must serve governance and buyers too.

Early self-serve monetization failed to land larger customers because Snyk lacked governance, reporting, and breadth across tech stacks that AppSec leaders and CISOs required—forcing them to add sales, enterprise capabilities, and a product-led sales motion while keeping developer love intact.

Structure growth teams around outcomes and make them truly cross-functional.

Snyk’s growth group is organized by acquisition, activation, monetization, and platform, with each team including engineering, PM, design, growth marketing, and decision science; this alignment on shared KPIs and skills reduces friction, accelerates experimentation, and avoids marketing–R&D misalignment.

Invest early in trustworthy behavioral data and a disciplined experimentation process.

Snyk had plenty of data but lacked clean, intentional behavioral tracking, so they built schema-validated event plans, a growth data platform, and regular impact-and-learning rituals, enabling reliable activation definitions, predictive models, and company-wide use of experiment insights.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Security programs were historically more about audit and policing and enforcement versus developer enablement or empowerment.

— Ben Williams

While the answer to how does your product monetize users was much less clear-cut in the early days, the answer to how does your product acquire and retain users has always been product-led.

— Ben Williams

The GitHub pull requests were a first-of-a-kind integration… not only fixing code, but educating users and bringing new ones in at the same time.

— Ben Williams

You’re never gonna have a shortage of ideas in a high performing growth team. Knowing where to focus amidst that sea of ideas is a really important role of the strategy.

— Ben Williams

If you focus on the user’s path to value, monetization will follow. Learnings are the path to impact, not the opposite of it.

— Ben Williams

Snyk’s origin story and early product-led, community-led growth among Node.js developersDesigning and scaling growth loops (GitHub PRs, SEO assets, security education) for acquisition and engagementTransition from pure PLG to product-led sales, and lessons from early failed self-serve monetizationStructuring growth and product organizations (cross-functional growth teams, decision science, product ops)Approach to freemium vs. paid, trials, and packaging for developers vs. enterprise buyersDefining activation and retention using data-driven team-level behavior (fixing vulnerabilities)Importance of experimentation, data infrastructure, and institutionalizing learning across the company

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.