Naomi Ionita
Naomi Ionita is a Partner at the venture capital firm, Menlo Ventures. She started her career in engineering in 2002, shifted to product in 2006, and built product growth and monetization teams starting over a decade ago as one of the first PLG leaders in B2B. She was an early mentor at Reforge and her expertise is in building full-stack growth teams and cultures, launching new products, and helping existing products monetize and retain their users.
AI & Technology Skills
AI strategy should focus on high-ROI areas like sales, marketing, and support where automation directly impacts the bottom line.
"I think what I described around marketing and sales, just because they really touch the dollars. It can be this ROI story around saving time, but also driving revenue. There'll be plenty of really eff..."
The 'Modern Growth Stack' consists of tools that automate growth workflows (experimentation, billing, reverse ETL) previously built in-house.
"The modern growth stack... is the evolution of what you do with the data. So these are the workflows that the data enables to drive the business forward for product growth and revenue teams like I use..."
Modern experimentation tools should tie directly to warehouse data and business-level KPIs rather than just surface-level clicks.
"Eppo, which offers experimentation for the modern data stack. So unlike Optimizely, which focused on more kind of click through metrics, Eppo ties directly to the metrics in your data warehouse. So ty..."
Growth Skills
Pricing should be treated as a living part of the product roadmap, revisited every 6-12 months as new value is added.
"Do not set it and forget it. I see companies do this, where they labor over designs and features. And they build this perfect product that's delightful to use. And then pricing's sort of plucked out o..."
The three most common pricing mistakes are delaying monetization, underpricing through lack of segmentation, and failing to iterate.
"One is waiting too long to monetize. Another one is underpricing. And this isn't just setting the base price too low, but it's also leaving money on the table by not offering different plans to cater..."
Features essential for reaching the 'aha moment' and forming a habit must remain in the free tier to drive adoption.
"If it gets you to the aha moment, that path to habit formation, that has to be free. That's the core utility of your product. And so the idea is that in that first session or first day, someone's gett..."
Distinguish between features that provide immediate value (Day 1) and those that provide value after significant usage (Day 100) to simplify the initial purchase decision.
"What is a day one premium feature? What is a premium feature that you can get value from the very first time you engage with the product? That's different than your day 100 features. Those are the one..."
Selecting a value metric that scales with usage creates a natural revenue escalator as customers grow.
"Matching price to value... This entails picking the right value metric. So, this is the unit of value that they derive from using your product, and it creates this natural escalator, because as people..."
The Van Westendorp method is an effective survey framework for determining price sensitivity and willingness to pay.
"I'd say the easiest on-ramps here for companies to start digging into that is to use Van Westendorp's method here... If you take the packages that users designated as nice to have and must have, you m..."
Lack of hesitation in sales negotiations is a signal that you are significantly underpriced.
"In that moment, the exec said, 'Okay, sure. Sounds good.' Not a minute of hesitation, not a second of hesitation. And what he learned in that moment was that, one, he was wildly underpriced... what I..."
Most successful SaaS companies use a hybrid model combining fixed subscriptions with usage-based limits for predictability and growth.
"The vast majority have a hybrid approach. And so what I mean by that is they're typically some good, better, best subscription model where there's some consumption component across each tier, like som..."
Leadership Skills
Trading off immediate individual revenue for massive top-of-funnel growth is strategic if the product has a clear path to enterprise expansion.
"If you know that you have a bridge to move up market, then giving up the long tail of individual users can be very worthwhile... Figma is a great example of that. This was a company that took a while..."
Product Management Skills
Collaboration must be a core part of the initial product vision rather than a feature added later.
"I always used to say you can't retrofit collaboration. You have to be collaboration-first. And a lot of companies now really take that for granted. But back in mid-2000s, this was kind of a new way of..."
Use forced-ranking or point-allocation surveys to identify which features actually drive conversion and value.
"We would make a list of our features that we had and maybe new things we wanted to build and have people rank them as a must-have, nice to have, or not necessary that help us understand the relative p..."