Why Illumex Abandoned Product-Led Growth (And What They Did Instead)

Why Illumex Abandoned Product-Led Growth (And What They Did Instead)

Product-led growth is having a moment. Lower CAC, faster sales cycles, built-in virality. Every SaaS playbook points to the same conclusion: let users try the product, experience the value, and convert themselves. Simple.

Except when your product requires connecting multiple data sources, configuring integrations, and understanding complex outputs before users see any value at all.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Ina Sella, CEO & Founder of Illumex, explained why her team’s attempt at product-led growth nearly stalled their momentum—and what they built instead to unlock growth in the data observability market.

Why PLG Seemed Like the Obvious Choice

The logic was sound. Illumex built a data observability platform for technical users—data engineers, analytics engineers, and data platform teams. These are people who prefer to evaluate tools hands-on rather than sit through demos. They want to kick the tires, test it against their own data, and make decisions independently.

The target audience, the product category, and the market maturity all pointed toward self-serve. “We thought about doing like a free trial or freemium,” Ina explains. The team built out the infrastructure for self-service signups, created onboarding flows, and prepared for an influx of product-qualified leads.

Then they waited for conversions. They didn’t come.

The Implementation Barrier Nobody Talks About

The problem wasn’t interest. Prospects signed up. They logged in. They looked around. Then they left without ever experiencing the core value of the platform.

The issue was implementation complexity. Getting value from Illumex required connecting to data warehouses, setting up integrations with orchestration tools, configuring monitoring rules, and understanding the lineage visualizations. None of this was difficult for a technical user—but it required time, attention, and a clear understanding of what to do first.

In a pure PLG motion, users need to reach their “aha moment” quickly, ideally within minutes. But for a data observability platform, the path to value involves setup steps that prospects simply weren’t willing to do without guidance. They’d sign up with good intentions, see the configuration requirements, and decide to evaluate it “later.” Later never came.

This is the silent killer of PLG for technical infrastructure products. The target users are technical enough to use the product independently—but that doesn’t mean they’ll invest the time to figure out setup without help. The activation barrier was too high.

The Failed Experiment’s Hidden Lesson

Rather than abandoning the experiment entirely, Ina and her team looked for the underlying principle. Why did prospects want self-serve access in the first place? It wasn’t actually about avoiding human interaction—it was about reducing friction and maintaining control over their evaluation process.

Traditional enterprise sales processes force prospects through a gauntlet: schedule a demo, sit through a pitch, explain their use case multiple times, wait for custom configurations, negotiate contracts before seeing the product. Self-serve removes all that friction.

But Illumex’s implementation barrier meant they couldn’t deliver value without some human involvement. The question became: how do you maintain the low-friction benefits of PLG while adding the guidance needed for successful setup?

The Hybrid Model That Actually Works

The solution Illumex landed on sounds almost too simple: keep the self-serve signup but immediately engage with sales support. “What we ended up doing is keeping the ability to self-serve and sign up, but we will contact you right away,” Ina explains.

This hybrid approach preserves what prospects value about self-serve—no forced demos, no lengthy sales processes, immediate access—while adding what they actually need to get value: guidance on setup, answers to technical questions, and help prioritizing which integrations matter most.

The key insight is that “self-serve” and “sales-assisted” aren’t binary choices. The best motion depends on where friction actually exists in your customer journey. For Illumex, friction wasn’t in the signup process—it was in the setup and configuration phase.

By keeping signup frictionless but adding immediate human support, they solved the real problem without forcing prospects through traditional enterprise sales theatrics. Users still maintain control over their evaluation. They just don’t have to figure everything out alone.

What This Means for Implementation-Heavy Products

The broader principle here matters for any B2B product with a meaningful implementation phase. Time-to-value isn’t just about product complexity—it’s about how much work users need to do before they experience core value.

If your product requires connecting to external systems, configuring settings, importing data, or understanding a new mental model, pure PLG probably won’t work. The self-serve signup will generate interest, but most prospects will churn during setup.

The solution isn’t to abandon self-serve entirely. It’s to identify exactly where prospects get stuck and add targeted human intervention at those specific points. For some products, that might mean live onboarding calls. For others, it might be dedicated implementation support. For Illumex, it meant immediate sales engagement after signup.

The Tactical Playbook

Here’s what Illumex’s hybrid model looks like in practice. When a prospect signs up, they get immediate access to the platform—no demo required, no approval process. But they also get contacted by the sales team within hours, not days.

The initial contact isn’t a sales pitch. It’s technical enablement. The team helps prospects understand what to connect first, how to interpret initial results, and which features matter most for their specific use case. This dramatically reduces the time to value and increases conversion rates.

The prospect still controls the evaluation. They can explore independently if they prefer. But they have a direct line to experts who can accelerate their path to value. This is especially important for data observability, where understanding what “good” looks like requires context about normal versus anomalous patterns.

When to Choose Sales-Assisted Over Pure PLG

Not every product needs this hybrid approach. Pure PLG works brilliantly for products where users can experience core value in under 15 minutes without any configuration. Think collaboration tools, simple analytics platforms, or workflow automation that connects via OAuth.

But if your product requires any of these, you probably need sales assistance: connecting to multiple external systems, configuring complex rules or logic, importing substantial data before value is visible, understanding domain-specific interpretations, or coordinating across multiple team members.

The test is simple: can a motivated prospect reach their “aha moment” in a single session without talking to anyone? If not, pure PLG will generate signups but struggle with activation.

The Results

For Illumex, the hybrid model solved the conversion problem without sacrificing the benefits of self-serve. Prospects still get immediate access and maintain control over their evaluation. But now they actually complete setup and experience the platform’s value.

More importantly, the early sales engagement creates better long-term customers. “We try to be very hands-on with our customers. I’m very involved myself. I join sales calls, I join customer calls,” Ina explains. This high-touch approach builds relationships and product understanding that pure self-serve never could.

The lesson isn’t that PLG doesn’t work—it’s that implementation complexity is the critical variable most founders underweight when choosing their GTM motion. User sophistication matters less than setup requirements. A product can serve highly technical users and still need sales assistance if the path to value requires meaningful configuration.

The best GTM strategy isn’t the one that sounds good in a pitch deck. It’s the one that actually gets prospects to experience your product’s core value. For Illumex, that meant building something that looks like PLG on the surface but works like sales-assisted growth underneath. Sometimes the best answer is refusing to choose between the conventional options.