For some time, private investors and Wall Street have been betting on unprofitable startups who spend heavily on growth to scale, that is Growth at all costs.

A strategy gaining in popularity to achieve responsible scale is product-led growth (PLG)—think Slack, Calendly, Expensify, and Dropbox—companies that have shifted power from the buyer to the end-user. If you want to rise to meet the demands of today’s market while growing sustainably, PLG is the secret.

If the first step to building a business that’s worth a billion dollars is to develop a product that solves a meaningful problem for the customer, step two is telling the world.

To do that, you need people who will advance the mission. As a company scales, articulating the company culture ...