2023: Year-In-Review

We started 2023 with clear signs of product-market fit. The buzz around Storylane was just unreal. 

Product Marketers and Sales Leaders were all talking about us organically. It felt the right time to scale up. So, we set ourselves an ambitious target – to triple our growth by the end of the year.

To hit our 3x goal, we had to:

• Grow Storylane's brand in the market.
• Make Storylane users successful within 5 minutes of signing up.
• Build a resilient, customer-centric team to support growth.
• Nail communication as a remote team.

So, did we achieve it? Here's a recap:

Storylane went PLG

From Day 1, we've wanted to democratize access to interactive demo software for every tech company, regardless of size. To achieve that vision, we had to be the first product in the Demo Automation category to offer a 100% free plan.

After speaking to 500+ prospects, we decided it was the right time for us to go PLG, so we launched Storylane's 100% free plan in Q2 2023. 

By going entirely PLG, our customers can tour and try Storylane for free and personally experience the quick and scalable demo creation and sharing capabilities Storylane provides. 

To support our move to PLG, our customer success and chat support SLA adapted to become super quick, too.

These changes led to users creating fully self-serve interactive demos in under 10 mins using Storylane. In fact, our customers created over 70,000 demos (which were viewed by seven million+ viewers, saving them about 6 million minutes in total) in 2023.

3.5x revenue, 5x customers

Our PLG move, along with new Storylane features and product updates, helped us as a business by acquiring many enterprise accounts for us. 

We also continued our founder sales along with our AE. While opinions may differ, we believed it was best to continue, especially in a competitive market like Demo Automation. This decision helped us build strong trust with customers while they are evaluating and also stay ahead in the market on products.

Today, Storylane is actively being used by companies like Nasdaq, Clari, CB Insights, and Zscaler to improve their sales demo conversion rates and close more deals.

Our brand also continued to grow (because of strong word of mouth, ease of use, and affordability). We won a lot of customers because they had heard about us or someone referred them. To double down on this growth, we built our marketing team this year and hired our first Head of Marketing. Even though our marketing team is small, we definitely packed a punch!

In 2023, Storylane was identified as a Leader in the Demo Automation category on G2. We also ranked quite high on G2, with 200+ reviews in a short span of time.

Because of these efforts, we ended up increasing our revenue by 3.5x and our customers by 5x!

3x team

One of our main priorities was to expand our team to better support our customers and products. We started searching for the best folks who shared our vision and were deeply obsessed with making Storylane customers happy.

Referrals and our own product helped us find new hires. People who applied for jobs in engineering, marketing, support, and sales really liked Storylane and could see themselves using it as customers.

We put our customers first in everything we do. Sur, our head of engineering, puts it well with his title "Head of Engineering, Tail of Customer Support".

We wrapped up the year with our first-ever remote team retreat. Although some of us had met before, it was the first time the whole team had come together in person. 

It was a blast – we talked, shared stories, played water polo, participated in mindfulness workshops, jammed together, and planned for 2024. We're now a team of over 40 dedicated Storylaners, proudly serving more than 1,000 customers.

We're hiring – in case you're interested in becoming a Storylaner.

Looking Ahead

The 'Demo Automation' category from G2 is relatively new and growing very fast. In the last year, we saw more and more B2B GTM teams getting educated about this category and considering it a 'must-have' in their tech stack.

As we turn the page to 2024, we want to thank our team (and their families), customers, and advisors for their support. We've got clear goals, an incredible team, and an amazing community of Storylaners who are just as passionate about our journey as we are. 

We'll continue pushing boundaries, leading the Demo Automation category, and helping our customers build demos with speed and scale.

Cheers,

Akash & Nalin (founders of Storylane)