[EPIC] Market PostHog as the tool of choice startups, starting with YC W23 batch

[charlescook-ph]

Background

We have a deal for YC companies that has historically performed quite well - we are more popular than Amplitude on Bookface. Lots of other companies (like Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Segment) have more established startup programs.

We could do something better that indicates that PostHog is a great solution for startups. Having an open source version and generous free tier on cloud implies that we are a good solution, but we could be more explicit and dominate the startup market. Brex are doing a great job of this.

Why?

High growth startups are our ICP, and we want to clearly be known as the first tool that any CTO or product team installs for a new product. If startups join us and end up being super successful, that is obviously good for us commercially. Even if they aren't, people move between startups a lot, and this helps us spread word of mouth.

How can we make this cool?

If we try to compete on the same terms as existing companies, we won't stand out - everyone has basically the same offering (free credits), and the partner incentives they offer are easily findable if you go directly to their websites. Lame.

What is we did a more generous free tier (like the YC deal) plus stuff a startup may not have already, such as Superhuman, Sentry, PagerDuty, Cron/Notion, Pitch, Deel, Drata, Pry (probably not feasible, as acquired by Brex), Ashby, WeWork.

Layer on top of that cool things like special office hours/masterclasses and other benefits I haven't thought of yet. Our YC deal is pretty good on that front already to be fair.

I think we should take the accelerator route, as this builds word of mouth in specific communities, rather than just one off startups coming to us, which won't be as impactful. Plus it pre-screens startups as being genuine businesses with growth prospects, not just random people who want free stuff, so we don't have to do the checking.

To do list

• [x] Compare our current YC deal to other companies (Amplitude, Mixpanel and then other cool companies outside our space, e.g. Brex)
• [x] Make sure we have an obviously much better/cooler deal than our competitors
• [x] Update our Handbook accordingly - PR out
• [x] Create a startups page on posthog.com - prob a Jan 2023 thing to go beyond YC
• [ ] Come up with a list of other accelerators to contact
• [ ] Contact them and say 'we can do a version of this startups page custom for you'
• [ ] Win

But what will we call it?

Hoglets, of course.

[andyvan-ph]

Love the idea and the name

[ivanagas]

Some ideas.

Deals:

1. Add content founders would need like GDPR, finance without a finance person, important metrics to raise, "how to create the Y Combinator dashboard" 2.. Partner deals with a specific angle. Data, security, devtool needs for early startups. Focus on those rather than general deals (like Brex or Y Combinator) because they will likely be better served elsewhere.

Distribution:

1. On top of accelerators, contact early stage investors
2. Make it easy for accelerators to ask for the deal themselves

Make it cool:

1. PostHog "featured" startup on deals page.
2. Create a hedgehog image with a shirt of them wearing the startup's logo
3. Suggest experiments they could run to improve their product

[lottiecoxon]

Love this idea.

• would we feature this on the pricing page- if I was a start up I would go there first + would be a good way to capture people
• (building off what Ian suggested) success stories are shown via hoglets that are based on the company: the people that work their, what the company does, logo etc - could be a personal touch to enhance relationships with these start ups (plus fun to look at)

[charlescook-ph]

would we feature this on the pricing page

Maybe in the 'Discounts' section? But I imagine we would create something like posthog.com/startups and would be sharing that link directly with communities like YC for people to land on, so it's not so important it's also on the pricing page tbh.

Alternative idea - create a separate but extremely similar page for each accelerator - e.g. posthog.com/yc, posthog.com/techstars so it feels a bit more personalized to them.

[joethreepwood]

I love this idea.

Additional idea to throw in the mix: Have a section of the handbook/blog/slack channel just for users in this scheme, creating essentially our own community of start-ups where people can share advice, swap content, etc. Every month we throw in a talk by James/Tim/Luke/Charles/Guests to spur conversation.

I think the big challenge will be finding other incubators and convincing them to let us infiltrate them in this way, potentially. YC was a warm lead for us, whereas others may not be. But lets give it a go!

[charlescook-ph]

I think the big challenge will be finding other incubators and convincing them to let us infiltrate them in this way

Agree - if this ends up being a blocker, I think we pivot slightly into this being a more generic startup scheme.

[joethreepwood]

I think the big challenge will be finding other incubators and convincing them to let us infiltrate them in this way

Agree - if this ends up being a blocker, I think we pivot slightly into this being a more generic startup scheme.

Or, one of my hackathon ideas was: we become an accelerator 🚀

[andyvan-ph]

Nothing to add other than "yes, this sounds cool".

[charlescook-ph]

Adding our current Bookface listing here for reference:

[charlescook-ph]

I've written an updated version of the copy in this doc - @jamesefhawkins mind taking a look, making any edits you see fit and updating in Bookface please?

(I'm not looking for feedback from the wider team on this btw unless you see something obviously wrong - this doesn't need lots of people to review...)

Addendum - I don't think we should create a YC page on reflection, the Bookface deal page is enough. Once we've got these YC process bits finished up for this batch, then I'll move onto to the wider startup stuff in January.

[charlescook-ph]

Next steps here now the Bookface page has been updated:

• [x] @charlescook-ph to create a template email for @jamesefhawkins to send to each new Bookface launch personally
• [x] Once signed off, @charlescook-ph to write up each one and add it to @KendalHall 's YC tracker
• [x] @KendalHall to ensure the emails get sent out

I think our objective here should be to get people into a private Slack group as quickly as possible, so that James isn't managing potentially 80 1-1 relationships via WhatsApp only.

Rough notes on the template email from James:

• Hi congrats on the launch, personalized note about them
• Want to let you know about PostHog - here is the Bookface link
• Here's my phone number
• Invite to Slack - we've created a special Slack group for the batch - Charles create group in User Slack
• cc'ing the CS team (yc@posthog.com?) - check who is in this email group

[charlescook-ph]

Startup page proposal here

[charlescook-ph]

I'm gonna close this - the page is live, it's all documented in the Handbook 🚀