From Product-Led to Sales-Led ft. Jon Widawski, Co-founder & CEO, Maze

Top of the Lyne

Figma did it for design. Slack did it for team comms. Zoom did the same for meetings. Salesforce - CRM.

Every once in a while, a tool comes along that pushes the envelope of our imaginations and brings our presumptions crashing to the ground. And reinvents how sh*t gets done.

In 2023, user research and testing aren’t quite the same anymore. And for that, we have Maze and Jo Widawski to thank.

And if you’re reading this and thinking “What do I need usability testing for?” - you’re not alone. But you probably will be.

Jo started up in 2018 with a mission to democratize testing. Within 3 years, Maze had built the foundations of a new category, washed away the demons of complexity it was mired in, and put a new weapon in the hands of - not just researchers, but designers, product managers, marketers, and many others.

Today, over 60,000 brands ranging from Uber and HP to McKinsey and GE use Maze for user research and usability testing.

Building a new category is no easy feat. Jo will be the first to tell you:

“Building a company is a lot about shooting arrows and then during targets around them afterward, and saying it was your vision all along. When we started, we really believed that we just needed to build better research.”

With the targets now drawn, we thought it’d be worth getting to the bottom of how the hell Jo and Maze did it.

This is the story of how.

00:00 Price against value

00:31 Tweet Reactions

06:33 Verbalizing a category

08:50 Introduction

11:52 Maze's GTM evolution

17:44 Product taking the center stage

19:41 Switching to Enterprise

22:38 Layering sales in PLG

26:42 Early branding investments

29:08 Design pet peeves

31:32 Rapid Fire

34:02 Up next for Maze