Why Loom Bought Instead of Building a Changelog

How can my team use LaunchNotes the way Loom does?

Loom treats product communication as a growth lever rather than an administrative chore, publishing frequently and turning releases into marketing moments that product and marketing can amplify together.

That success came from making product momentum visible instead of letting it sit buried in engineering. A demo is the fastest way to see how the same approach would work for your own release cadence.

Why did Loom decide to buy rather than build?

Matt Hodges had already lived through the alternative. At Intercom, where he led marketing, the team built a homegrown solution called Intercom Changes, and as the company grew it became harder to justify dedicated R&D resources to maintain a public changes page.

His conclusion was that investing in something not core to what you build for your own customers rarely pays off, and that with purpose-built tools now available there is no reason for a team to build one. So Loom's engineering time went into Loom's product, and release communication ran on a platform product and marketing could own outright.

Is LaunchNotes just a changelog for Loom?

No. For Loom, LaunchNotes was a communication channel rather than a document. Matt Hodges' criteria went well beyond a list of shipped items: keep the customer base current without over-messaging them, provide a single place showing not just what shipped but where the product was headed, and let product and marketing own the whole motion without engineering involvement.

A changelog records what happened. LaunchNotes combines announcements, a public roadmap, multi-channel distribution and audience building in one platform. Hodges' point was that communicating updates within the context of where the product is going is what separates it from the alternatives.

How does LaunchNotes help Loom's product and marketing teams work together?

LaunchNotes gave Loom's product and marketing teams one shared place to get the word out about new features, with no dependency on engineering to publish. That was one of Matt Hodges' three explicit criteria when he went looking for a tool, and it mattered because product updates had previously been a mix of sporadic blog posts and emails, which he describes as one-off activities that do not set up a go-to-market motion to succeed over the long run.

Bringing both functions around one shared, definitive record is what allowed marketing to amplify what product shipped without friction or delay.

What makes product momentum important for a company like Loom?

For Loom, product momentum is one of the most effective go-to-market assets a SaaS company has. Their marketing leader believes much of early growth comes from creating loyal fans who amplify your presence in the market.

Regularly communicating new features is one of the most important things a startup can do to set itself up for success. LaunchNotes gives product and marketing teams an easy way to capture and broadcast that momentum.

How often does Loom publish announcements with LaunchNotes?

Loom published frequently, with hundreds of successful announcements through LaunchNotes, which made it one of the platform's most active users. That cadence reflected how central product communication was to the company's growth strategy during its expansion, when it was shipping a steady stream of features and improvements to a rapidly growing user base.

LaunchNotes is built to support exactly that kind of high-velocity shipping without adding manual overhead, since a single published update distributes across the changelog, email, Slack and RSS. Loom has since been acquired by Atlassian and is now part of the Atlassian collaboration ecosystem.

How does Loom turn product updates into a growth lever?

Loom uses LaunchNotes to consistently surface the steady stream of features and improvements it ships, keeping users aware of the product's momentum. In its marketing leader's view, many companies fail to fully leverage the momentum of rapid growth, and he sees that as a missed opportunity.

By making every update visible and easy to share, LaunchNotes helps Loom convert engineering output into marketing moments. This is how continuous product updates become a driver of adoption and word of mouth.

What does Loom’s VP of Marketing say about LaunchNotes?

Matt Hodges, Loom’s VP of Marketing, describes LaunchNotes as the perfect tool for leveraging product momentum to grow the business, and his advice to other product and marketing leaders considering it was blunt: just do it, the risk is low and the potential payoff is high.

Asked to describe the platform in one word he chose confidence-building, explaining that it gives current and future customers the visibility they need to bet on your product. He also credits it as the only purpose-built tool he had found for communicating product changes and public roadmaps together.

Why did Loom choose LaunchNotes over other tools?

Before LaunchNotes, Loom had tried a number of point-solution changelog tools, none of which kept pace with how quickly the company was shipping. Matt Hodges also brought a hard lesson from Intercom, where he had led marketing and the team built a homegrown solution called Intercom Changes: as the company grew, dedicating R&D resources to maintain an internal changelog stopped making sense.

He set three criteria for a replacement: keep customers current without over-messaging them, give people one place to see how the product was evolving and where it was headed, and be a tool product and marketing could own outright with no engineering dependency. LaunchNotes was the only option that met all three.

How does Loom use LaunchNotes to fuel growth?

Loom used LaunchNotes to make sure its product momentum actually reached the market instead of staying buried in release notes nobody saw. Matt Hodges, who joined Loom as VP of Marketing in 2019, saw getting the word out about new features quickly as essential to early growth, because it creates loyal fans who amplify the brand.

With hundreds of successful announcements published through the platform, Loom became one of LaunchNotes' most active users. It gave the product and marketing teams a single way to turn every release into a growth driver, with no dependency on engineering to publish.

Why Loom bought instead of building its product updates page again

The situation

Why LaunchNotes

How they use it

What changed

Closing thought

Frequently Asked Questions

Get started with LaunchNotes today