The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) · Saturday, August 15, 2026
Matt Swulinski discusses how Product-Led Growth (PLG) principles still apply in the age of AI agents. He believes that optimizing for how agents make decisions and select tools is crucial, and companies strong in PLG will be better positioned for this agentic layer.
“That's a good question. I think, I mean, all of the startups I've worked with have been PLG, right? And I think in a world of agents, there's definitely a layer where PLG still matters because PLG assumes you have a perfect self-serve funnel to the human.”
“And in the same way, you're definitely going to want to optimize it for how is an agent doing research? How is it picking the tools and the APIs that it's actually using?”
“So the best companies in PLG focus right now will also be best positioned in my opinion for the agentic layer of essentially decisions being made without that human in the loop when tools are being selected for certain tasks.”