👋 Hi, I’m Kyle from OpenView and welcome to my newsletter, Growth Unhinged. Every other week I take a closer look at what drives a SaaS company’s growth. Expect deep dive takes on SaaS pricing, product-led growth, public company benchmarks, and much more.

When we think about inherently viral products, what comes to mind are collaboration products like video conferencing (Zoom), meeting scheduling (Calendly), messaging (Slack), async video (Loom) and so on. Many of these products are only valuable when they’re used in multi-player mode, giving users a powerful incentive to share the products with others.

Life is good for viral products since these products not only sell themselves, they market themselves too. OpenView’s Product Benchmarks report showed that the fastest-growing companies generate 2x as many new sign-ups from product referrals compared to everyone else. Who doesn’t love fast user growth with a $0 CAC?

Even if your product isn’t inherently viral like Loom or Calendly, it pays to give product virality a second look. Consider that it’s far easier to generate growth from your existing product users than it is to acquire totally new ones. This truism includes increasing the engagement and advocacy of existing customers as well. And virality can occur even in unexpected places. After all, who would’ve expected a single-player product like Wordle to become a viral phenomenon?