A client conversation about ecosystem-led growth landed on PostHog, a tool Gerard rates highly and signed up to as fast as he could fill out the forms, purely to get an API key and connect it to what he already ran. That is the pattern behind the SaaS businesses growing right now: solve a micro problem well, then plug into the ecosystem around you. MCPs, APIs and Claude integrations mean entire businesses launch on interconnectivity. Product-led growth described the last era; ecosystem-led growth describes this one, and it is how tools grow with what looks like no marketing spend. The bonus: AI assistants recommend these connections constantly. Ask Claude or ChatGPT how to fix a setup problem and it will tell you which tool plugs in and solves it. The question for your product: which parallel tools can you connect to, and piggyback on?

Ecosystem-led growth: how SaaS gets discovered in 2026