LAUNCH PLG — $2,997–$4,997 · 3-WEEK SPRINT

Jake McMahon — ProductQuant

8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

Your PLG motion goes live with measurement already built in — so Day 1 data is Day 1 signal.

A 3-week sprint that designs your self-serve activation funnel, instruments it for your engineering team, and delivers a live dashboard before the first cohort flows through — so you have something real to optimise, not just something to count.

Start the Sprint → See what’s included ↓

Your PLG motion launches with instrumentation your team uses — or full refund · 3-week delivery

WHAT YOU HAVE AT THE END

Activation funnel designed Your self-serve value moment defined and mapped for this product — not borrowed from a template

Engineering spec delivered Full event taxonomy — your team implements without a working session to interpret it

Dashboard live before Day 1 Free-to-paid funnel visible the moment the first user flows through

Activation baseline set Month 2 has something real to compare against — not an estimate

90-day plan in hand Each review gate has an agenda — no blank dashboards at the monthly check-in

$2,997–$4,997 · fixed price · 3-week sprint

WHAT SHIPS WITHOUT THIS

The PLG motion is live. The instrumentation measures the wrong thing.

“We launched the free tier six weeks ago. We can see logins and session duration. We cannot tell you whether anyone has reached the moment where the product actually solves their problem — because we never defined what that event looks like for self-serve.”

Head of Product — B2B SaaS, Series A

Free signups are flowing. Nobody knows which ones are real.

“We get signups every day. Some of them upgrade. Most of them don’t. We have no idea what the activating ones do differently because the dashboard doesn’t separate them. Every metric is averaged across the whole cohort.”

Founder — Pre-Series A SaaS

The 90-day PLG review is coming. The only number you have is total signups.

“Investors asked us for the activation rate last quarter. We gave them signup-to-login ratio because that’s the closest thing we had. They pushed back. We’re building the measurement now, three months in.”

CEO — Seed stage SaaS

WHY THE INSTRUMENTATION HAS TO BE DESIGNED FOR PLG SPECIFICALLY

Copying your sales-led event taxonomy into a PLG motion measures engagement. It does not measure self-serve activation.

In a sales-assisted motion, the account executive fills the gap between signup and value. They answer questions, run demos, and walk the user through the moment the product clicks. The instrumentation captures what happened — logins, feature use, session time — and that is enough because a human is already guiding the journey.

In PLG, the product has to do what the account executive did. If the instrumentation is not designed to see whether it does — if no event fires when a user reaches the value moment on their own — you cannot see the thing that matters. You see activity. Activity is not activation.

This sprint builds the instrumentation around one question: can a user reach the value moment without human help, and if they do, what does it look like in the data? That question is answered before the first cohort flows through. Day 30 produces a clear picture because the measurement was built to produce one — not assembled afterwards from whatever events happened to fire.

WHAT YOU GET

Five deliverables. Three weeks. A PLG motion you can read clearly enough to improve.

Week 1 · Funnel Design

Self-Serve Activation Funnel Map

Your PLG funnel designed from scratch — what a user has to do to reach the value moment without human help, mapped as a sequence of verifiable events. Not your sales-led onboarding with self-serve labels on the stages. Built around your specific product and how it actually delivers value.

Activation event defined: the moment that predicts whether a free user converts
Habit loop event: the recurring action that signals a formed usage pattern
Drop-off points identified before instrumentation begins — so the spec captures them
Distinction between activation blockers and steps users move through without friction

Week 1 · Engineering Spec

Instrumentation Spec Your Team Can Implement Directly

The complete event taxonomy for the PLG funnel — every event, property, and trigger condition specified so implementation can begin the same day the spec is delivered. No working session required to interpret it. Your engineer reads the document and knows what to build.

Full event schema: name, type, properties, trigger condition for every funnel event
Conversion signals: what users do before they upgrade — the events that precede paid conversion
Exit events: what free users do (or stop doing) in the session before they churn
Paywall interaction tracking: how users engage with upgrade prompts relative to their activation status

Week 2 · Dashboard

Free-to-Paid Conversion Funnel, Live Before Day 1

The full path from free signup to paid conversion, built and connected to your events before the first cohort flows through. Your team opens this dashboard on Monday morning to answer the question driving the meeting — which cohorts are activating, which are churning silently, and what the week’s conversion rate looks like at each stage.

Funnel by stage: signup through activation through conversion — drop-off visible at each step
Cohort breakdown: which acquisition sources produce users that actually reach the value moment
Upgrade intent signals: which free users are showing conversion intent before they visit the pricing page
Week-on-week view: is the funnel improving or declining as the motion matures

Week 2 · Baseline

Activation Rate Baseline from First Real Data

The activation rate measured from the first data that flows through the instrumented funnel. Set before any optimisation begins so Month 2 has something to compare against — not a retroactive estimate built from whatever events happened to fire in the first few weeks.

Activation rate: share of signups reaching the value moment within 7 days
Habit loop rate: activated users forming a recurring usage pattern within 30 days
Time-to-activation: median time from signup to first value moment
What these numbers mean at your product stage — context, not just a figure

Week 3 · Measurement Plan + Handoff

90-Day Measurement Plan and Handoff Session

The roadmap for the first 90 days of PLG measurement — what to review, what each result means, and what to do at each decision gate. A 90-minute handoff session where everything is walked through with your product and growth team. Weekly reporting template included so the Monday review does not require rebuilding the report from scratch.

Day 30 agenda: activation baseline, first conversion data, initial expansion signals
Day 60 agenda: cohort patterns, habit loop performance, paywall timing
Day 90 agenda: full funnel performance vs baseline, PLG vs sales motion contribution
Weekly template: metrics, format, and interpretation guide — ready for any team member to run

A pattern that comes up in PLG launches: a SaaS team adds a free tier, ships the same analytics instrumentation that served the sales-led motion, and runs the first monthly review three weeks later. The dashboard shows signups, logins, and session time. The question — are free users activating on their own? — cannot be answered because no event fires when they do. The team rebuilds the instrumentation retroactively. The first real cohort data arrives in month three, not month one. This sprint is built so that does not happen.

THE TIMELINE

Three weeks from kickoff to a live dashboard and a baseline your team can act on.

Week 1 — Journey mapping and instrumentation design

A working session to define the self-serve journey: what does a user have to do to reach the value moment without human help? Existing instrumentation reviewed against what the PLG funnel actually requires — what fires when it should, what is missing, what is measuring the wrong thing. The activation funnel defined before any event work begins so the engineering spec is built for the right questions from the start.

Week 2 — Spec delivered, dashboard built, baseline measured

The full event taxonomy documented and handed to engineering. The free-to-paid conversion dashboard built and connected to the event schema. Implementation validated before the dashboard goes live. The activation baseline measured from the first data flowing through the instrumented funnel — not from retroactive estimates. The dashboard is live and the baseline is set before the end of week two.

Week 3 — 90-day plan, reporting template, and handoff

The 90-day measurement plan built and delivered — what to review at Day 30, 60, and 90, and what each result tells you about where to invest next. Weekly reporting template finalised so the Monday PLG review does not require assembling the report from scratch. Everything handed off in a 90-minute session with your product and growth team. Day 30 review date set with a specific agenda before the session ends.

FIT CHECK

Teams adding self-serve for the first time get the most from this sprint.

Right fit

B2B SaaS launching or recently launched a free tier or self-serve trial — and instrumentation has not been designed for it yet
Sales-led team adding a PLG motion for the first time — no existing self-serve measurement baseline
Free tier already live but team has no visibility into which signups are activating vs churning silently
Product team building PLG features without a measurement system to validate them against
Founder who needs to present PLG performance to investors with more than signup counts

Not the right fit

Products that require a sales setup call or professional services before a user can reach the value moment — the PLG motion itself is not yet viable
Teams 12+ months into PLG with an established funnel measurement system — what you need is an optimisation sprint, not an instrumentation build
Companies with no plan to add self-serve — the instrumentation is built for a funnel that does not exist yet
Teams still deciding whether PLG is the right motion — this sprint assumes the decision is made

Not sure if a self-serve motion is viable for your product? A Foundation engagement covers that question alongside competitive and go-to-market positioning. Or book a 20-minute call — if this sprint is not the right starting point, the call will clarify what is.

Jake McMahon — ProductQuant

Jake McMahon

8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

I run this sprint myself — the funnel design, the instrumentation spec, the dashboard build, and the first cohort analysis. The most persistent mistake in PLG launches is treating the self-serve activation funnel as a simplified version of the sales-assisted onboarding. They require fundamentally different measurement. In a sales-assisted motion, the account executive is the instrumentation — they observe, they adjust, they fill the gaps. In PLG, that job goes to the data. If the events are not designed to see whether a user can reach the value moment on their own, you are not measuring the PLG motion. You are measuring activity in it.

Everything delivered in this sprint is formatted for the person who uses it. The funnel map is for your PM to use in planning. The event spec is for your engineer to implement without a follow-up call. The dashboard is for whoever runs the Monday review. No translation required between what I deliver and what your team acts on.

I won’t do this:

Copy the sales-led event taxonomy into the PLG instrumentation without redesigning it for self-serve
Define the activation event without a working session that confirms it matches what users actually do
Build a dashboard that shows aggregate conversion numbers without cohort-level visibility
Deliver an instrumentation spec that requires your engineering team to revisit it in month two

What if our product is not fully self-serve ready?

The sprint will surface that in week one and document what needs to change before the PLG motion can be measured correctly. Some products need product changes before the self-serve activation funnel is viable — the sprint identifies those gaps and prioritises them. You leave with a clear picture of what it takes to make the motion work, not a dashboard built on a funnel that is not functioning yet.

Teams Jake has worked with

PRICING

One price. Everything your team needs to launch with measurement in place.

$2,997–$4,997

one-time · fixed price · scoped to your product

3-week sprint

Self-serve activation funnel designed from scratch
Full instrumentation spec for engineering (event taxonomy, properties, trigger conditions)
Free-to-paid conversion funnel dashboard, live before Day 1
Activation rate baseline from first real cohort data
90-day measurement plan with review agendas at Day 30, 60, and 90
Weekly reporting template — ready for any team member to run
90-minute handoff session with your product and growth team
Everything stays with your team permanently — no ongoing dependency

Exact price confirmed after a brief kickoff call — depends on your existing instrumentation and product complexity.

Book a Call to Start →

Guarantee: Your team opens the dashboard on Day 1 and sees which free users are activating and which are churning silently — or the sprint cost is refunded in full. If week one reveals a blocker that makes the sprint impossible to complete as scoped, that is surfaced immediately and you pay nothing.

Questions.

Anything else, book a call or send an email.

Book a call →

We don’t have any analytics instrumentation yet. Does that matter? +

No. The sprint is designed to build the instrumentation from scratch — that is the point of it. Week one maps the funnel and designs the event taxonomy. Week two produces the spec your engineering team implements and the dashboard built to receive the data. You do not need existing event data for the sprint to work. You need a product that users can sign up for and a value moment it is designed to deliver.

How is PLG instrumentation different from standard product analytics? +

Standard product analytics measures what users do. PLG instrumentation measures whether users can reach the value moment on their own — without a sales rep guiding them through it. The event taxonomy is built around the self-serve journey: where users stop without human help, what behaviour precedes free-to-paid conversion, and what a formed usage habit looks like when the growth is self-generated. The measurement questions are different, so the instrumentation has to be designed differently. Applying a generic event taxonomy to a PLG motion gives you activity data — not the signal you need to run the motion.

Our free tier is already live. Is it too late for this sprint? +

No. The sprint works for live PLG motions. Week one includes a review of what the current instrumentation captures and what it misses. Gaps are documented, the activation funnel is instrumented correctly, and a clean measurement window begins after implementation. You end up with a clear picture of what the data can now tell you about activation and conversion — rather than continuing to read engagement metrics as proxies for PLG health.

Do you implement the events or just write the spec? +

I design the instrumentation, document the full event taxonomy, and build the dashboard. Your engineering team implements the events — they receive a spec they can work from directly without a working session to interpret it. The dashboard is connected to the events once implementation is confirmed. After the sprint, your team runs the PLG measurement independently. There is no ongoing dependency on ProductQuant.

We also run a sales-led motion. Will the instrumentation conflict? +

The sprint instruments the PLG and sales-led funnels separately so the metrics do not mix. Self-serve activation events are tagged to distinguish them from sales-assisted journeys. The dashboard separates PLG contribution from sales-assisted conversion so both motions are measurable independently. You can see what the PLG channel is contributing without it being averaged into the sales motion numbers.

What if week one reveals the PLG motion is not ready to instrument? +

If the working session in week one reveals that the product cannot currently guide a user to the value moment without human help, that finding is documented with specifics — what is missing, what needs to change, in what order. The sprint does not continue to build instrumentation for a motion that is not viable. You receive a prioritised list of product changes needed before the PLG funnel can be measured correctly. That outcome is within the guarantee: if the sprint cannot deliver what was scoped, you pay nothing.