In this episode of ThriveCast, we speak with Sanjay Sarathy, VP of Self-Serve and Developer Experience at Cloudinary. Sanjay shares Cloudinary’s journey from a developer consulting firm to one of the most successful product-led growth stories in SaaS—scaling past $100M ARR while maintaining a strong self-serve engine and developer trust
Key Insights
* Cloudinary started as a consulting company before productizing a repeated developer pain
* Developers were treated as the core growth channel, not just users
* Early investment in developer support and documentation drove trust and word of mouth
* Self-serve and enterprise were built as a continuum, not competing motions
* Freemium created value first, revenue followed naturally
* Word of mouth still drives a significant share of daily signups at scale
* Simplifying signup and activation had outsized impact on growth
* Not all product launches succeed, fast failure led to better product strategy
Actionable Takeaways
* Treat your primary user persona as a growth engine, not a funnel step
* Invest early in support, docs, and activation, not just sales
* Let self-serve usage reveal future enterprise opportunities
* Reduce friction relentlessly small changes compound at scale
* Separate product experimentation from core revenue products
* Build trust first; monetization follows naturally
Resources Mentioned
* Cloudinary self-serve and freemium model
* Developer documentation and SDK-first onboarding
* Activation and signup flow experiments
* Product incubation model for new bets
If you’re a B2B SaaS founder, PLG leader, or developer-focused product team, this episode shows that sustainable growth doesn’t come from aggressive selling it comes from earning trust, removing friction, and letting value scale naturally across self-serve and enterprise journeys.
