Really cool to see you guys talking about your journey, hope to see you succeed.
I caught Posthog a bit early as it was trending on Git, and sent the repo link out to a few startup + dev groupchats on WhatsApp because I think it complements Metabase incredibly well. The combination of PostHog + Metabase lets you stand up a really powerful free BI and product analytics stack in a few seconds, and these are two areas I see so many early-stage startups faltering on. Not collecting product and usage/user data and using it to gain actionable insights.
Excited to continue following along from the sidelines to see what the future holds for you.
Thanks - it's really nice to see the community sharing it!
To your point on "in a few seconds"... We're currently trying to build out more libraries as fast as we can so people working on apps in lots of languages can easily integrate it - we've done Python, Ruby, NodeJS, JS, Go and PHP, and an API for the rest. Feature requests for new libraries as issues in the repo (https://github.com/posthog/posthog) very welcome.
Amazing article! It sounds like you guys made the right choice to move to SF.
Thank you so much for the super kind words about Kyte! The whole Kyte team much appreciated this and we are looking forward to delivering many more cars to your door in the future! :)
The best of luck for PostHog!!!
I wonder how you'd solve the visas in a situation like this. It seems to me the only way to found a company in the US is either via a O1 visum, a greencard, or a citizenship, all of which are rather hard to obtain, harder than the alternatives where you join an existing company. There is no big tech with on-campus immigration offices sponsoring you.
It's really tough - we had to get professional advice.
YC connected us with an immigration attorney the moment we got accepted and he helped greatly to make sure we approached this in the right way. It would have been a maze to do this without him. It's still not easy and it's a lot of extra stress.
Certain countries like the UK have ESTAs for up to 90 days, but the program is 3 months + then you generally will want to be here to raise afterwards, so you should get some advice on how to do this specific to your home country.
Even the VISAs are painful - for example, an O1 (even if you do manage to get it) means IIRC your spouse can't work even if you can.
> I used to run sales teams, my job was to try to give a realistic figure for how much our revenue would increase. Any experienced VP Sales will play down the number – most would prefer hitting a $20M target, over missing a $22M number by $1M and ending up at a higher number. That’s how you optimize for not getting fired.
Thanks :) I actually find this a really interesting topic. This approach can have some merit - ie it leads to you not overspending and running out of money if you are reliant on new business targets being hit. However, the ideal situation is that your CFO manages the spending conservatively whilst the VP Sales goes out and pushes things as far as they can. There are some morale issues too with giving very high targets when you are a managing a team who are judged against those - for fast growth, you want to give people a sense of accomplishment (so constantly undershooting huge targets is a quick way to prevent that) but also for them to push the boundary of what is possible.
Cutting yourself off from civil society so you can totally dedicate yourself to enriching the VC class doesn't seem positive to me. In fact it seems like this is how we keep getting so much software (and hardware!) that solves no actual human need of any kind.
They do mention London down in the article, but I already knew UK because of the spelling of sceptical and the use of "hired" where Americans would say "rented."
Nice to see an article where they aren't slamming on my city, btw. :) Although I question the "rarely windy" comment.
This mentions their first group office hours. Does YC now do group office hours instead of individual? If they do, I'd hadn't heard about it, and it seems like it could be an important innovation.
There's a mix, so you can request 1:1 office hours whenever you want to speak to a particular partner. The onus is on you to drive the agenda in these. We tend to use them to talk through what we're doing next. ie after our HN launch we wanted to discuss "we have some momentum, what should we do next". Basically, whenever we've too many ideas and need help being more focussed.
The group ones are a once every two weeks thing. The reason they're cool is that you hear about others raising issues you wouldn't have thought to raise yourself.
dirtydroog, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need a lot more persistence than that. Not only is "YC" well-known, and the operator of this site, but it's the first result in google when you search for "YC" or "what is YC".
Not trying to insult you, but you need to raise your game several levels.
The whole "stopped reading" meme needs to die. Generally it indicates a problem with the reader, not the author.
Yes, many writing coaches counsel writers to explain terms of art that might be unfamiliar to random readers. Granting that you're new here, one assumes that someone commenting is familiar with YC, but that might be a flawed assumption.
[+] [-] gavinray|6 years ago|reply
I caught Posthog a bit early as it was trending on Git, and sent the repo link out to a few startup + dev groupchats on WhatsApp because I think it complements Metabase incredibly well. The combination of PostHog + Metabase lets you stand up a really powerful free BI and product analytics stack in a few seconds, and these are two areas I see so many early-stage startups faltering on. Not collecting product and usage/user data and using it to gain actionable insights.
Excited to continue following along from the sidelines to see what the future holds for you.
[+] [-] james_impliu|6 years ago|reply
To your point on "in a few seconds"... We're currently trying to build out more libraries as fast as we can so people working on apps in lots of languages can easily integrate it - we've done Python, Ruby, NodeJS, JS, Go and PHP, and an API for the rest. Feature requests for new libraries as issues in the repo (https://github.com/posthog/posthog) very welcome.
[+] [-] francescow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mav3rick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] est31|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] james_impliu|6 years ago|reply
YC connected us with an immigration attorney the moment we got accepted and he helped greatly to make sure we approached this in the right way. It would have been a maze to do this without him. It's still not easy and it's a lot of extra stress.
Certain countries like the UK have ESTAs for up to 90 days, but the program is 3 months + then you generally will want to be here to raise afterwards, so you should get some advice on how to do this specific to your home country.
Even the VISAs are painful - for example, an O1 (even if you do manage to get it) means IIRC your spouse can't work even if you can.
[+] [-] eternalny1|6 years ago|reply
8 bosses, Bob!
Good write-up.
[+] [-] james_impliu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veeralpatel979|6 years ago|reply
I went ahead and read all your posts in the series:
https://posthog.com/blog/before-the-yc-application/
https://posthog.com/blog/the-yc-interview/
https://posthog.com/blog/moving-to-sf/
https://posthog.com/blog/pivot-to-posthog/
https://posthog.com/blog/after-the-hn-launch/
I'd recommend them to anyone who liked the linked post.
[+] [-] sbilstein|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tschwimmer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedance|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notlukesky|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbrown451|6 years ago|reply
Nice to see an article where they aren't slamming on my city, btw. :) Although I question the "rarely windy" comment.
[+] [-] fortydegrees|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catchmeifyoucan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ultimoo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] james_impliu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mandelbrotwurst|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] james_impliu|6 years ago|reply
The group ones are a once every two weeks thing. The reason they're cool is that you hear about others raising issues you wouldn't have thought to raise yourself.
[+] [-] robbiet480|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dirtydroog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redis_mlc|6 years ago|reply
dirtydroog, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need a lot more persistence than that. Not only is "YC" well-known, and the operator of this site, but it's the first result in google when you search for "YC" or "what is YC".
Not trying to insult you, but you need to raise your game several levels.
The whole "stopped reading" meme needs to die. Generally it indicates a problem with the reader, not the author.
[+] [-] robbrown451|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dctoedt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viklove|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] james_impliu|6 years ago|reply