Founder @ Valubyl | Product-Led Growth Advisor

Currently building Valubyl: The leading PLG agency for B2B SaaS onboarding and activation.

We’ve helped 30+ B2B SaaS companies turn free signups into paying customers by upgrading their self-serve onboarding experience.

We’ve partnered with world-class PLG teams like Instantly, Signwell, Freckle, Gymdesk, PromptLayer, Rosie... and delivered insane results like:

👉 Databox: activation up from 30% → 48%
👉 Stockpress: free-to-paid conversion up from 10% → 31%

If you want more paying customers from your freemium or free trial, let’s chat.

Feel free to send me a DM, email at yaakov@valubyl.com, or book an intro call with the link above.

Yaakov Carno

Woah, I just went to cancel my Lovable subscription and this blew my mind 🤯 Check out this new plan they surface in their downgrade flow:

For the last few days, I've been debating if I should downgrade. 

It's not that I don't love the product, I do, it's just that a couple of my projects are already live and I don't expect to make big changes for the next few months. 

Paying for a tool that’s just sitting there didn’t feel great.

The only problem is that I didn't want to my live sites to get that "made with Lovable" badge again...

But I decided I'd just downgrade and deal with it.

Then this happened 💸 They hit me with a "Lite" option... 
(and no, you won't find it on their pricing page)

Same 5 credits/day as their free plan, giving you just enough room to make small tweaks... BUT they also allow you to keep all your custom domains and remove Lovable branding.

In so many products, these are the exact levers used to block downgrades and force users to stay on higher plans.

But here... it actually felt like a really thoughtful gesture.

Not sneaky. Not manipulative. Not a 27-step downgrade maze.

AI credits are still new for consumers. This felt like Lovable was saying: 
"Hey there, I totally get that you're still figuring out how to use and budget a tool like this, so here's the perfect way we can keep building together."

And it was actually exactly what I needed.

Whatever happens with these monetization experiments, one thing is clear:

This is a company that's obsessed over what their users want and need, and it shows in every part of their product.

Founder @ Valubyl | PLG activation systems for self-serve B2B SaaS

20 hour journey ahead with our 2 year and 7 month old kiddies. Wish us luck 😬✈️

Goodbye Australia 🇦🇺

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This is what happens when you prioritize removing friction over creating context:

Teams obsess over reducing friction and removing steps, but most of product design challenges are actually about helping people understand.

Users arrive mildly interested and slightly confused about what your product does. If they don't quickly understand what they're looking at or why it matters, they'll just leave.

Making it easier to do confusing things just gets people to leave quicker.

Your goal is to make it to make it obvious why each step matters and how it gets them closer to solving the problem they came for.

That's the best way to speed up time-to-value.

One of the things I love most about what I do is working with incredible teams around the world. The flip side is that most of it ends up being virtual.

Nothing beats working with great people in person.

So good to spend time with the klaro team in Sydney.

Thanks for having me over Niklas Olsson, Kogulan Baskaran, Farley Schaefer!

2026 marks our 4th year building Valubyl. It's been an epic journey working closely with 30+ B2B SaaS companies on PLG, and a real privilege partnering with industry leaders like Instantly, Databox, Signwell, Freckle, and many more.

In theory, self-serve onboarding should be easier than ever. AI can guide, generate, explain...
But in reality, activation has become even more fragile.

Products are more powerful. AI started showing up everywhere.

And yet most onboarding experiences still struggle to make that power feel concrete. We’re in an abstract phase of AI adoption where capability has moved faster than understanding.

Teams are struggling to onboard people into AI-powered products, and the old playbooks aren’t holding up.

What’s interesting is that our niche hasn’t changed at all.

We’re still focused on product-led, self-serve SaaS. Still obsessed with onboarding, activation, and getting people to real value.

But how we work, and how much of the outcome we’re able to own, has changed a lot.

Over the last few years, it’s become obvious that activation is a real and painful challenge for teams, from super early-stage companies to PLG leaders at scale.

We see the same outcomes again and again: users signing up with intent but never reaching value, onboarding that’s missing or vague, and teams left guessing where momentum actually breaks.

So heading into year four, we’re evolving in a very intentional way. Same hyper-niche, just much deeper execution.

We’re taking ownership of activation systems across onboarding, lifecycle, and monetization. Not just advising, but helping teams actually build, connect, and run them.

And alongside that, we’re going to start sharing a lot more of the work itself.

Not so much polished thought leadership. No hot takes.

Real, practical assets pulled straight from client work. The stuff teams are actually struggling with right now: making value obvious, shortening time-to-value, fixing quiet drop-offs, and turning self-serve usage into something that sustains a business.

Same core belief as always: product value is the growth strategy.

Value first, revenue follows.

If you’ve followed along so far, thank you! 😁
If you’re new here, welcome 👋

Happy 2026!

User activation is completely different for AI products. 

In traditional PLG, activation followed a familiar path: 

Setup → Aha → Habit. 

You helped the user get started, reach their first moment of value, and eventually form a repeatable pattern of success. 

Today, activation happens inside a continuous conversational cycle: 

Prompt → Context → Output → Action → Habit. 

Each stage feeds the next. Each interaction teaches the system, and the user, what to expect. 

What used to be setup and “aha” moments now happen almost simultaneously, the second a user starts typing. 

Let's break it down: 

👉 Prompt: The new “signup” 
This is where users declare intent. A great prompt experience helps them express what they want without friction or doubt. 

👉 Context: The hidden setup. 
Some products infer it from behavior or connected data; others still ask explicit onboarding questions to better personalize results. Both paths work if they make the outcome more relevant. 

👉 Output: The moment of truth. 
The first result must be both impressive and useful. “Wow” gets attention, but relevance drives retention. 

👉 Action: The bridge. 
The most important first step in the actual product. Real activation happens when users apply what they got: editing, publishing, sharing, or integrating it into their workflow. 

👉 Habit: The loop compounds. 
Each prompt teaches the system and the user, tightening trust and shortening time-to-value. 

The first principles of activation haven't changed. 
Time-to-value and retention are still the critical metrics.

✅ And the goal remains: help users reach value, quickly and repeatedly, in a meaningful way that keeps them coming back.

What's changed is how that value is delivered. 

And AI products need to adapt.

Building in public | Postli ✍️| Papermark🔗| Other tools for fun🤩

Self taught developer, moved from academia to startups. Building in public Postli- LinkedIn content creation software, and Papermark - Open Source Docsend alternative, for sharing documents and creating data rooms.
Launching other micro projects and other products, interested in marketing growth and PLG and Product onboarding catalyst.

iuliia shnai

2025 was the busiest year and we also met the sweetest baby girl 👶🏻

✔️$1.5M ARR 
✔️ run 10+ marketing experiments
✔️ spent $100k+ on acquisition channels
✔️ manage to avoid burnout 
✔️ share our journey on starter story
✔️ yoga practically every day
✔️ meet my family and close friends 3 times
✔️ survived pregnancy and giving birth
✔️ tried to do 1 new thing every day ( new coffee, new walk, new small idea built)

But some things changed: 
0 new visited countries
10h working days are over 
8h sleep became overrated

Share more MRR and baby photos in 2026 for me here 😂

LinkedIn is a new instagram, opening it to see what friends who building in public do every day.

Iuliia Shnai

Co-Founder Papermark🔗| building in public, marketing with code 👩‍💻

Six painful decisions we made to bootstrap Papermark to 2000 customers

After 5 years of failing startups and projects, these what really helped:

𝟏) 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜, no stealth mode
Posting our journey, MRR, and challenges were really helpful. Until you become transparent nobody gonna read you. Result? 30% of early customers found us through social posts. 

𝟐) 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝟑𝐱 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞
Everyone when entering a market trying to offer lower price, we also did it. But competing on a price ONLY as a bootstrapped founder, you will just not have enough runaway. Price fairly and offer more.

𝟑) 𝐒𝐚𝐲 𝐧𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲
First we were excited about enterprise deals, not anymore. There is a lot to handle for small team like our. Enterprise customers will want custom features for $50k deal, which maybe nobody else needs. If you can, get 100 smaller customers vs 1 enterprise.

𝟒) 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭
It forced us to build product that speak for itself. 90% of customers sign up without talking to anyone.

𝟓) 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫
In my provious company we spend a lot of time to copy features of others. Zero adoption. So, in Papermark we decided we just listen carefully to every person. 

𝟔) 𝐎𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 first, 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫l𝐲
You want good motivated people, people who are free and flexible. $7k/month for 3 freelancers vs $15k for 1 employee. More flexibility, faster execution, less risk for both.

Why are all of those painful?
For many reason:
- Enterprise seems like big check quick
- Lower price is easy to sell
- Copying competitors seems like a quick win
- Self serve is hard to set
- Building in public requires you to be transparent about all pain points you have.

There is no "𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭" moment with growth, especially in AI time.

I thought, after 2 years and 2000 customers we will know our acquisition channel and we can just scale it in 2026

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲:
• Planned 10+ new experiments
• 1-3 months per test
• Constantly analyzing what works
• Exploring how AI can be used 

What I learned so far?
Aquisiton evolves all the time. 
→ 2000+ customers 
→ $1.5M ARR 
→ Proven initial product-market fit

You still testing:
1. New SEO content approached
2. Different pricing tests
3. AI for growth
4. Social media strategies
5. Partnership channels

So, the core is not in figuring out 1 acquisition channel but 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠.

Building a system that constantly finds new things that work rather than finding the one thing that works.

Reducing churn is easy.
You just stop letting people leave.

Any your best practices to share? 😂

You do not need CRM to build $1M ARR business

Avoid all bloat from the beginning

Every time someone asks me which CRM we use , I just change the topic. So many times I tried to adopt CRM and it never worked. 

But every sales person told me, you need one. And yes I saw good experience and adaptation of Hubspot, but for significantly bigger checks. 

If your average check is $50k a year, yes CRM could be useful, as I closing cycle take some time and multiple iterations. But if you build a self service business, focus on analytics, signup, signup to conversation rate.

Here what we do in Papermark, what really works instead of CRM:
1. Stripe to track sub updates and analytics 
2. Enrich customers and users
3. Posthog to track all activity and conversion
4. Connections with customers on social
5. Free plan and free trial available in the product

Created Papermark intro video with 1 prompt  

The coolest thing is that all components are from our actual open source repo

It would take me at least 10 hours to do the worser version of it in canva as not a designer

Any kind of video is a big pain and always take hours: 
- need a good light
- setting up the proper recording tool 
- be sure quality of recording is good
- voice as a non speaker always so bad
- animations as non designer takes hours

And now finally I feel like we are so close to fully automate at least product demos, swap face, use elevenlabs for voice and remotion for animated product designs.

Working on V2.0

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