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Inside PostHog
![Features tell, benefits sell. Well, they used to. What are you talking about? Benefits are why someone would use your product. Features are what your product does. An example of selling by benefit is Salesforce: Homepage title tag: Salesforce…]()
Nov 2, 2022 by James Hawkins
![It's one thing to build something , it's another to build something that people want . This principle, and the ones that follow in this post, applied at 0 users and are still relevant today at ~50K developers in our community. In fact, we have had…]()
Oct 20, 2022 by James Hawkins
![PostHog got pretty far (17k customers across all our products, went through Y Combinator, seed, series A and B raised, $MM revenue) before I really figured out what motivates me. Before we started – building the exact place I'd want to work I've…]()
Oct 7, 2022 by James Hawkins
![As an all-remote team, we know how important getting together in person is (we’ve written about this before ). Our product analytics team (plus Luke, Annika, Cory, and Lottie) recently got back from an offsite in Rome – see also how we plan a…]()
Oct 6, 2022 by Ian Vanagas
![We learned an interesting fact recently: only 20% of our users track their marketing website and their product using PostHog. This is our fault. We market to engineers at PostHog, so it's not a surprise we're less used for marketing. But here's…]()
Sep 28, 2022 by Andy Vandervell
![Today I’d like to rant talk about how non-engineering people at startups – especially execs – treat engineers like a fundamentally different type of human being. A whole new species, with a different set of personal motivations, goals, frustrations…]()
Sep 12, 2022 by Charles Cook
![There really hasn't been a single situation where transparency hasn't been to our company's advantage. Most companies seem to share when necessary but not by default. I hope this post changes that because, as a startup, you've done something wrong if…]()
Aug 31, 2022 by James Hawkins
![The 2010s were marked by an explosion of tools focused on data. One of the biggest was session recording – a screen-recording-like service that tracked a user’s activity. Typically, session recording (SR) was popular with marketers and product…]()
Aug 31, 2022 by Mathew Pregasen
![As a company born at the beginning of the pandemic, PostHog has been fully-remote from its inception. Our team is 30+ people distributed across 10 countries; we have no central office, but we still value getting together in person. We give…]()
Aug 17, 2022 by Grace McKenzie
![Our CEO and co-founder, James Hawkins, recently joined Y Combinator to talk about the first five hires PostHog ever made, how we made them, and why. This is the story behind each hire, and the lessons we learned along the way. 1. Marius Andra James…]()
Aug 16, 2022 by Andy Vandervell
![PostHog recently swapped out Docker for Depot in their container image builds within GitHub Actions. The results are outstanding, taking the average build time from 16 minutes to 3 minutes. Building the PostHog images via depot build instead of…]()
Aug 5, 2022 by Kyle Galbraith, Jacob Gillespie
![Even when Tim (my cofounder) and I were doing a Y Combinator (YC) batch in 2020, we realized we got more work done when we worked asynchronously. Yes, even when there were just two of us, working in the same room as each other. It stopped us both…]()
Jul 20, 2022 by James Hawkins
![We're hiring Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). I'm biased of course, but I think it's worth explaining why we think PostHog is the most exciting place to be an SRE right now. Building a product In most places, with the exception of outages…]()
Jul 20, 2022 by Tim Glaser
![Imagine you're working on something for other developers that you really, really want to be great. Perhaps you're creating a new startup, perhaps you're creating a blog post, or perhaps you're working on a side project that you want to share with…]()
Jun 30, 2022 by James Hawkins
![Since we started PostHog, our team has interviewed 725 people. What's one thing I've taken from this? It's normal for candidates not to ask harder questions about our company, so they usually miss out on a chance to (i) de-risk our company's…]()
Jun 22, 2022 by James Hawkins
![The longer your strategy gets, the more useless it becomes. That's why, at PostHog, we communicate strategy as 'Nail X', where X is the thing we need to nail. It's simple and effective. We recently switched from Nail Enterprise to Nail Self Serve…]()
Jun 10, 2022 by James Hawkins
!["I wonder how much this SaaS product costs to..." "Contact sales!" 😤 Contact. Sales. Two words that embody everything we hate about modern SaaS products. And, when you see them, you know it's just the start of the sales dance. Even if you're deemed…]()
Jun 1, 2022 by Simon Fisher
![By Colin Wren, Co-founder of Reciprocal.dev . It took me until I built my second product, Reciprocal.dev , to really understand the value of analytics. I’d always thought of such tools as being an invasion of privacy and questioned the need for…]()
May 26, 2022 by Colin Wren
![Y Combinator (YC) is seen as the world's best, and most prolific, three-month accelerator program. Upwards of 7,000 founders have taken part. Yet, no one really talks about what happens afterwards. PostHog did Y Combinator's Winter 2020 batch. We…]()
May 18, 2022 by James Hawkins
![Ok, so you’ve read Zero to One and The Hard Thing About Hard Things , but what are all the boring admin things that are actually going to drain 40% of your time which no one has told you about? More importantly, what is the ops stack you can use…]()
May 4, 2022 by Charles Cook
![Imagine being able to grow twice as fast with just a few hours of work. Changing your pricing has a real chance to get you there. Here is a breakdown of the counterintuitive lesson I've learned as a cofounder at PostHog - the more we give away for…]()
Mar 17, 2022 by James Hawkins
![The image preview you see when sharing a link is a great opportunity to get your brand’s message in front of people without them even clicking through to your website. Most sites just opt to display a logo and some brand elements.]()
Mar 3, 2022 by Cory Watilo
![When PostHog was fresh out of YC last year, there were two things we focused on: (i) build and (ii) talk to customers. Hiring a product person felt like it would slow us down. Engineers on our team would speak to our users (also engineers) - surely…]()
Feb 18, 2022 by James Hawkins
![As you may have heard, we’ll soon host our first ever meet-up for anyone who uses or is interested in finding out more about PostHog. It’ll take place in London, on February 24th — we’d love for you to join us . And if you haven’t RSVPed yet…]()
Feb 15, 2022 by Joe Martin
![Session Recording is one of PostHog's core features, and one of the few completely open source ression replay tools available. It allows you to see how real users use your website, mouse clicks and all. It's really cool and addictive (give it a…]()
Feb 11, 2022 by Rick Marron
![I recently wrote a blog post for my personal site about the lessons I'd learned from leading my first two projects as a Software Engineer at PostHog . In it, I lay out a five-step approach for how I own projects. One common theme that stood out…]()
Feb 4, 2022 by Neil Kakkar
![2021 went well for PostHog - especially given we're not even two years old yet. 7,014 customers across our range of products (!) 800% increase in organic traffic (!) 300% net revenue retention (!) 0.41 years CAC payback (!) Here's what we learned…]()
Jan 9, 2022 by James Hawkins
![I've been asked this three times today, so I thought I'd explain it from a founder's perspective. This is what I've learned so far. Figure out if design matters PostHog follows bottom-up adoption. This means our users find us online, install…]()
Dec 9, 2021 by James Hawkins
![It has been a dramatic month. Four weeks ago, our 16 month old daughter was diagnosed with retinoblastoma - a fairly rare form of cancer that affects the eyes. Update April 2022: we've finished chemo, she's now done with treatment and we're in…]()
Nov 12, 2021 by James Hawkins
![Recently, PostHog was invited to speak at OSA Con 2021 , an open source analytics conference organised by Altinity. It was a fantastic opportunity to talk to the community, alongside other engineers and leaders from projects such as ClickHouse…]()
Nov 6, 2021 by James Greenhill
![Creating mascots goes beyond just putting iPencil to iPad. It’s a long, confusing, and sometimes frustrating process which requires a lot of patience and tolerance for drawing hedgehogs 12 hours a day. A successful mascot should go beyond…]()
Oct 7, 2021 by Lottie Coxon
![Developer Relations exists and is executed in different ways at almost every company. Our Developer Relations journey at PostHog has just begun, and we still don't know exactly what it will look like in the medium term. But we can still assess what…]()
Sep 30, 2021 by Phil Leggetter
![We recently completed an entire rebrand of our website. From start to finish, it took less than a month. This sounds like an incredible feat of discipline - and in a way, it was. But the path to success wasn't linear; it took us more than six months…]()
Sep 28, 2021 by Cory Watilo
![Earlier this month, we finished our first PostHog offsite of the year near Porto, in Portugal. Team members travelled from America, Estonia, The United Kingdom, and Poland to spend a week living together and, in many cases, meeting for the first time…]()
Sep 14, 2021 by Joe Martin
![One huge mistake some startups make is using titles to establish and reinforce hierarchy. This is dangerous for two reasons: Iteration and speed largely determine the growth trajectory of most product-led startups. Because of this, it's important to…]()
Sep 14, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Product testing is essential, but your testing won’t always pick up the small sources of friction which build up over time and frustrate your users. This is where ‘dogfooding’ comes in - regularly using your product to get the full picture and build…]()
Sep 13, 2021 by Marcus Hyett
![Last week we had an offsite in the beautiful Portuguese countryside, an hour's bus journey from Porto. We uploaded a highlight reel of the retreat to TikTok . One of the sessions we ran was a PostHog pre-mortem. This involved breaking up into teams…]()
Sep 10, 2021 by James Hawkins
![We’ve talked before about product-minded engineers at PostHog. We don’t have PMs dictating a roadmap or solutions - it all comes from engineering. A PostHog engineer has complete autonomy to decide the 'what' (prioritization) and the 'how…]()
Aug 26, 2021 by Paolo D'Amico
![We are open source is literally our top value ... and what better way to be transparent than to share a diary? Late mover advantage Product analytics is a busy space. It reminds me of the front entrance to Liverpool Street station in London…]()
Aug 25, 2021 by James Hawkins
![Before joining PostHog, Joe Martin had never owned a Mac. The former tech and games journalist previously did everything on PC, but joining PostHog’s Apple-dominated culture came with a few… necessary adjustments. ”The first thing I did was have…]()
Aug 6, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Why you need content Developers are a selective bunch when it comes to what type of content they consume, and clickbait-y “Ultimate Guide To X” posts won’t fly with them. Your content needs to be detailed, thoughtful, and relevant to their problems…]()
Aug 6, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![We’re proud to announce a new hire; Phil Leggetter will head up Developer Relations at PostHog. Developer relations sits at the intersection of product development, engineering, and marketing. The role serves communities of core and secondary…]()
Jul 21, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Y Combinator has listed PostHog as number 157 out of its top 159 companies by valuations and exits as of July 2021. "Um… what?" I know, I know. You'd think we merely post the link and keep it moving. After all, coming third-to-last on a list of…]()
Jul 2, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Ramping up fast in any senior product role requires understanding as much context as possible across 3 axes (Market, Product and People). I’ll talk you through my process of going from zero understanding in these three areas, to landing a clear…]()
Jul 1, 2021 by Marcus Hyett
![One of PostHog’s core values is that everybody codes. That doesn’t mean everyone needs previous experience as a developer or engineer, but we encourage everyone to learn and practice the basics of shipping, no matter their role. When we’re hiring…]()
Jun 25, 2021 by Joe Martin
![Our main selling point as a company is transparency. Being an open-source company , this isn’t surprising: our code, designs, and content are all largely available online , for free, even while still a work in progress. This transparency also…]()
Jun 23, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Thinner docs, better products The highest priority for support at any company is shortening the feedback loop between your customers and your product team. The fastest way to achieve this is by having your product builders interface directly with…]()
Jun 15, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Last week we proudly announced we’d successfully raised $15 million in a Series B funding round, with support from Y Combinator Continuity Fund and GV (formerly Google Ventures). You may have seen the news on VentureBeat . What made this funding…]()
Jun 14, 2021 by Joe Martin
![Jun 10th, 2021 – PostHog , the open source product analytics company, today announced $15 million in fresh funding and major new free features for users of data warehouses. The company's Series B was led by existing investors Y Combinator's…]()
Jun 10, 2021 by Joe Martin
![As a founder, one of the most surprisingly important skills I've realized I have is hitting the front page of Hacker News . Out of five posts that I hoped would get there, four did. Look mom, lots of traffic: I don't claim to be a well-established…]()
May 20, 2021 by James Hawkins
![What could be worse than handing out 50% of your company's equity to a co-founder who doesn't understand the product as much as you do, and all they seem to bring is the ability to talk? Likewise, a sales-focused founder may be struggling to know…]()
Apr 28, 2021 by Mo Shehu
![Best practices for productive meetings at your startup Ever had one of those days where you do nothing but hop into one meeting after another? Even worse is the 30-minute break between meetings which seems like enough time to squeeze in some work…]()
Apr 19, 2021
How we justified quitting our jobs and financing PostHog early on
Mar 9, 2021 by James Hawkins
![PostHog has pivoted a lot . After 5 pivots in 6 months, we got into Y Combinator last year, pivoted again whilst we were there and have now gone from the first commit to thousands of deployments, a team across 10 countries and $12M raised, in well…]()
Jan 21, 2021
Building an all-remote company from scratch
Sep 1, 2020
![Open source projects have long battled with how to finance themselves. PostHog is lucky to have significant funding and wanted to share what we did to help other cool projects take off. For those who've not met us before, PostHog provide open…]()
Jun 4, 2020 by James Hawkins
After the HN launch
Mar 1, 2020 by James Hawkins
Pivot to PostHog
Feb 25, 2020 by James Hawkins
Moving to San Francisco
Feb 24, 2020 by James Hawkins
The YC Interview
Jan 1, 2020 by James Hawkins
The time before YC
Sep 1, 2019 by James Hawkins