🏔️ Loom Growth

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Welcome to the SaaS Hill, a weekly newsletter that tries to predict the future of SaaS.

Let's take a closer look at the Loom GTM breakdown ⚡️.

⭐️️ Intro

Atlassian's purchase of Loom for $975 million in October 2023 is a significant event for both the industry and for Atlassian.

For the industry, it signals a growing recognition of the importance of asynchronous video communication in the workplace.

For Atlassian, the acquisition of Loom is a way to expand its product portfolio and reach new customers. Loom's tools are a natural fit for Atlassian's suite of workplace collaboration tools, and the acquisition will allow Atlassian to offer its customers a more comprehensive set of communication and collaboration options.

It will also help Atlassian to compete with Notion, Airtable, Clickup, Linear, Monday, Wrike, Asana, as they are going to integrate Loom with Jira.

Here is what we will discuss today:

• Loom’s metrics

• How Loom grows

• Loom’s pitch deck

• 9 useful links

• 5 related trend reports

🔢 Metrics

Loom is a screen and video recording software with a valuation of $1.5 billion that has raised $203.6 million in funding, generating an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $36 million from 200,000 customers (25 million users) and maintaining an average revenue per account (ARPA) of $15, supported by 270 employees with an ARR per employee of $130,000.

📈 Trend Chart

Loom revenue growth (Source: Latka)

🚀 How Loom Grows

Here are some growth strategies and GTM ideas that fuel growth:

1. PLG model

2. Onboarding (Aha moment and Habit Moment)

3. Referral Program

4. Growth Loops

5. Integrations and Partnerships

1/ PLG

Loom has started investing heavily in their PLG (Product-Led Growth) model from the early days: simple onboarding, collaboration features, growth loops, a freemium model, usage paywalls, integrations, templates, aha moment, and habit loop excellence.

2/ Onboarding

Since Loom is focused on a self-service experience for users to activate, onboarding is super important for them.

At Loom, converting a “tester” to a long-term, paying customer, happens in two steps: the “magic moment” and the “habit moment”.

“The first ‘aha’ moment is the magic moment. It’s when a user realizes ‘Wow this thing is fast - I’ve never been able to create a video this quickly.’

Onboarding checklists and clean design help users get started with Loom and experience that “aha“ moment.

The “habit moment” is more complex to get right.

“The habit moment when a user starts to understand sending a Loom is something they should probably be doing every day for many different reasons. They start to realize a Loom is a format that has many use cases just as long-form writing, presentations, or spreadsheets do”.

Then Loom users share their videos. There are a bunch of options to do that:

Thus, Loom activates its main growth loop:

1. A new user records their first video.

2. Naturally, we record videos to share with someone else (prospects, customers, friends, teammates, etc.).

3. The new user shares the video with multiple teammates.

4. Teammates see the video and the Loom branding.

5. Some of them create a Loom account as well.

3/ Referral Program

The Referral Program is also an important part of Loom's growth strategy.

Loom's freemium plan has its limitations (paywalls), and the biggest one is the number of videos users can store. Currently, freemium users can store only 25 videos.

However, Loom allows you to increase this limit and earn free videos when you send invites to Loom.

4/ Growth Loops

Loom has implemented numerous growth loops to make it easier to acquire new users.

Here are some of them.

Incentivized Referrals and Word of Mouth. We already discussed this one (invite teammates to earn free videos) 👆

Powered By Links. When user share their videos, everyone sees Loom logos and branding, so everyone knows that this video is recorded using Loom

Embedded Loop. Embedded Growth Loop is a type of growth loop that allows products to grow by embedding themselves on other platforms or websites.

Loom makes it easy to embed Loom videos on other platforms like Slack, Notion, Slite, Gmail etc.

External Collaboration Loop. When users share a video, others can comment, react, or discuss the topic further.

5/ Integrations and Partnerships

Loom co-founder, Shahed Khan, shared on Twitter that they know that 2 most popular destinations for Loom videos are Slack and Email.

So they reached out to Slack, and Slack agreed to invest in Loom’s round, and build out an unfurl experience for Loom videos. The in-line experience drove a ton of brand awareness for them.

To learn even more about Loom's growth, read Loom co-founder Shahed Khan's Twitter threads on:

1. on growth to 100K users

2. on growth from 100K-500K users

🖼️ Pitch Deck

Loom (originally called OpenTest) used this deck to raise a $3M seed round.

🔗 Useful Links

1. Loom Pitch Deck by Best Pitch Decks

2. How Loom grew its user base after its Product Hunt launch

3. How They Built Loom And Grew It To 14 Million Users by Forbes

4. Loom: Weaving 14M users together with video by Toplyne

5. How Loom drives growth with referral marketing by Alexander Kehaya

6. Loom’s Product-led GTM Playbook: How It Became Worth $1 Billion by Foundation

7. Lessons from Loom on product strategy and organizational leadership | Anique Drumright (COO at Loom)

8. Learn the secrets of scaling a successful SaaS company directly from Joe Thomas, CEO and Co-founder of Loom by SaaStr

9. How they built Loom and grew it to 20 million users by Startup Surf

🤝 Related SaaS Trends

1. 🏔️ Product Led Growth > or how we will buy software soon

2. 🏔️ 55+ Growth Tactics > free experiments to drive growth

3. 🏔️ Airtable Growth > a next-generation no-code spreadsheet

4. 🏔️ Viral Loops > unlock low CAC growth opportunities

5. 🏔 Async > embrace asynchronous communication for remote work

Thanks for reading. See you next time 👋
Best, Vlad

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