Every quarter, a SaaS team reads a case study about Slack or Figma and decides to "go PLG." They add a free tier. They rebuild onboarding. They hire a growth PM. Twelve months later, free signups are high and conversions are near zero.

The standard diagnosis is execution: the onboarding is too long, the upgrade prompt is in the wrong place, the free tier has too many features. So the team iterates. Conversion stays low.

The real problem is structural, not executional.

Product-led growth (PLG) is not a strategy you select from a menu. It is a structural outcome that emerges when specific product conditions are true simultaneously.…