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Pillar · Growth

More revenue from the users you already have.

Somewhere between sign-up and contract, one thing is holding revenue back: the first session, the retention curve, the upgrade path, or which accounts get a human. We find it and fix it, one friction at a time.

Let’s talk growth
  • Win new revenue

What this is

  • Activation, adoption and retention
  • Pricing and upgrades
  • Growth loops inside the product
  • Routing accounts to self-serve or sales

What this is not

  • Marketing execution (ads, brand, content)
  • HR or recruiting
  • Design for its own sake
  • A one-off audit you’re left to run with

Where we’ve done it

Growth you can measure.

5xProduct-led vs inbound sales revenue

Product-led sales motion built from zero, Apify.

12xFaster onboarding

Three months down to one week, Time is Ltd.

+10%Free → paid conversion

Plans and limits set where users hit value, Apify.

One way to split it

Every account moves through the same four stages.Who leads each stage is a choice.

A common setup: individual users stay product-led the whole way, team users get a salesperson to assist from activation, and enterprise users are sales-led from engagement. Users come in through the product, through your marketing, or through sales. We work out which mix fits your accounts, then build it.

01 Acquisition02 Activation03 Engagement04 Monetization Marketing-led · yours Product-led Sales-led Individual users · product-led Team users · sales-assisted Enterprise users · sales-led Sales assists Sales leads

This is one example of how it can look, not a fixed model. For your product, we decide with you where each type of account branches off and how much of each stage sales takes over.

The blocks inside it

  • Magic moment
  • Activation
  • Adoption
  • Retention
  • Monetization & pricing
  • Growth loops
  • Product-led & sales-led
  • GTM automation

Before → after

The five we get asked about most.

01 · Acquisition · Growth loops + win

Growth loops built into the product

“Every new user costs us a campaign. Nothing in the product brings the next user in on its own.”

If nothing changes

What changes instead

Growth is a line item: stop spending and it stops.
Usage creates the next user: shared output, invites, public pages, integrations.
Each channel is a separate bet with its own team.
One loop, measured end to end, from a user’s action to the signup it causes.
The product does nothing for acquisition.
Product loops keep bringing signups after paid spend stops.

How you’d know

  • Signups caused by existing users
  • Loop conversion, action → new signup
  • Share of signups from product loops
Where we’ve done it

Product loops on a self-serve developer platform: integrations and shared work that bring in the next user, Apify.

02 · Activation · Magic moment + win

A magic moment in the first session

“People sign up, click around for four minutes and never come back. We don’t know what they were looking for.”

If nothing changes

What changes instead

You measure signups, so signups is what goes up.
Activation is one named behaviour, tracked next to revenue.
Onboarding shows every feature and lands on none.
The first session is rebuilt around the one action that predicts whether a user stays.
Paid signups leave before they pay back what they cost.
More of the users you already paid for stay long enough to pay you.

How you’d know

  • Time to first value
  • Session-one activation rate
  • Day-7 retention, activated vs not
12xfaster onboarding
Where we’ve done it

Onboarding redesigned from three months to one week, Time is Ltd.

03 · Engagement · Retention + win

A retention curve that flattens higher

“We keep users for a month. Then the curve drops and never comes back up.”

If nothing changes

What changes instead

Retention is a chart someone opens once a quarter.
Someone reads the cohort curves every week and owns every drop.
You don’t know which week users decide to leave, or why.
You find the week users leave, and build the habit that keeps them into the product.
Acquisition has to refill what leaks every month.
The curve flattens higher, so every cohort you acquire is worth more.

How you’d know

  • Week-4 and week-12 cohort retention
  • How often users repeat the key action
  • Returning users per month
Where we’ve done it

Retention mechanics across a large self-serve developer base, Apify.

04 · Monetization · Upgrades + win

Upgrades that happen on purpose

“Most of our revenue sits on the cheapest plan. People upgrade when they hit a wall, and half of them leave instead.”

If nothing changes

What changes instead

The paywall sits where engineering put it.
Limits and prompts sit at the moment a user has just got something out of the product.
The pricing page is the only upgrade path.
Usage triggers the upgrade inside the product.
You can’t tell an upgrade from a churn risk until the invoice.
Usage signals tell you who is about to outgrow the plan, and who is about to leave.

How you’d know

  • Free → paid conversion
  • Plan upgrade rate
  • Revenue per active account
+10%free → paid conversion
Where we’ve done it

Plan and limit design for a usage-priced, self-serve developer product, Apify.

Team & enterprise · Product-led sales + win

Self-serve into pipeline

“Thousands of self-serve users, strong adoption, and no way to turn any of it into real contracts.”

If nothing changes

What changes instead

Your largest accounts stay on a $50 plan because nobody asked.
Usage signals surface the accounts worth a conversation.
Sales has thousands of names and no way to rank them.
Reps work a queue ordered by what people actually did.
Growth is capped by the price of the self-serve tier.
Contract value stops being set by your pricing page.
Big deals run on slides, and the product sits out until signature.
In sales-led deals the buyer sees a guided trial and their own usage before signing.

How you’d know

  • PQL → opportunity rate
  • Self-serve → sales-assisted ACV
  • Expansion from PLG base
5xproduct-led vs inbound sales revenue
Where we’ve done it

Built the product-led sales motion from zero on a self-serve developer base, Apify.

Also in this area

  • The problem

    “Half our accounts use one feature and never find the other five.”

    What you get

    Adoption beyond the first feature

    In-product guidance, lifecycle messaging and usage signals that move accounts from one workflow to three.

  • The problem

    “Every new dollar of growth needs a new hire.”

    What you get

    Revenue that scales without headcount

    Automation across the GTM engine, so each new dollar of revenue doesn’t need a new person.

  • The problem

    “Heavy users pay the same as light ones, and the price hasn’t moved since launch.”

    What you get

    Pricing that grows with usage

    A pricing metric and plan limits tied to the value users get, so revenue per account rises with usage.

  • The problem

    “Nobody can say in one sentence why customers pick us.”

    What you get

    Positioning built on why customers buy

    Positioning and messaging rebuilt from why customers actually buy. At Palark, new positioning for the EU launch helped generate $1M in pipeline in four months.

  • The problem

    “Everyone owns growth, so nobody does.”

    What you get

    One number, one owner

    A single growth metric with a named owner, reported weekly.

Who you’d work with

Kirill is a pragmatic professional who actively chooses to verify all business decisions with real-world feedback. For an engineer like me, his vision and skill set were strictly complementary.

Dmitry DygaloFounder, Schemathesis
Kirill Turin
Kirill

Improves self-serve and sales-assisted revenue by finding and fixing one friction at a time. More than ten startups, and now growth, customer success, support and RevOps at Apify.

Read the full bio

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