Depth-First PLG

Find product-market fit by going narrow and deep before expanding wide

Ben Williams
How Snyk built a product-led growth juggernaut

Depth-First PLG

"Nailing that narrow and deep use case before expanding wider was absolutely critical and generally just sound advice around finding product market fit and building solid momentum before casting a wider net. It's difficult to maintain that focus for sure as the lure of that bigger term can be really tempting, but ultimately you have to build a service and market well to capture it." - Ben Williams

What It Is

A strategy for achieving product-market fit in product-led growth companies by focusing intensely on a narrow persona, context, and use case before expanding. Rather than trying to serve a broad market from day one, you nail a specific community completely, then systematically expand.

Snyk exemplified this by starting exclusively with Node.js developers wanting to secure their open source dependencies—a narrow enough slice to build quickly, but large enough to prove viability.

How It Works

The Narrow Focus

Single Persona: One specific type of user (not "developers" but "Node.js developers")

Single Context: One environment where they work (using open source components)

Single Use Case: One problem you solve (securing dependencies for vulnerabilities)

Why Depth Beats Breadth

  1. Validation speed: Narrow focus lets you quickly validate solutions on the path to PMF
  2. Feature completeness: Users care about depth in THEIR ecosystem, not breadth across others
  3. Community influence: Small enough community to meaningfully engage with
  4. Technical feasibility: Narrow scope means faster time to market

The Key Insight

"A JavaScript developer just won't care if you support Golang or Rust, but will absolutely care if a key feature like automated package upgrades just isn't available for their ecosystem."

Users in your target segment care about complete solutions for their specific context, not partial solutions across many contexts.

How to Apply It

  1. Define your narrow slice - Choose one persona + one context + one use case. Make it narrow enough to build quickly but wide enough to be viable.

  2. Go all-in on that community - Present at their conferences, build content for them, engage where they gather. Snyk's founders went "all out on being deeply involved" in the Node.js community.

  3. Build complete value - Create a solution that fully solves the problem for your specific slice. Don't spread thin across multiple ecosystems or use cases.

  4. Measure PMF signals - Strong retention in your narrow slice indicates readiness to expand. Until then, stay focused.

  5. Resist the lure of breadth - The bigger market is tempting, but you can't capture it without first proving you can serve a smaller segment completely.

  6. Expand methodically - Once you nail the initial use case, add adjacent segments: new languages, new ecosystems, new user types. Snyk added Ruby, then Python, then Java, etc.

When to Use It

  • At company founding when defining initial target market
  • When launching new products within an existing company
  • When pivoting and need to refocus
  • When growth stalls due to trying to serve too many segments

Source

  • Guest: Ben Williams
  • Episode: "How Snyk built a product-led growth juggernaut"
  • Key Discussion: (00:10:46) - How Snyk focused on Node.js community; (00:17:14) - Depth vs breadth and the New Relic/Ruby example
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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