Introduction

PostHog grew from 11 to 150 people and millions in revenue by learning tough lessons about hiring, product focus, and staying human.

What's the problem it solves?

It shows how startups can scale without losing their culture, clarity, or speed. Many companies fall apart when they grow too fast - PostHog’s lessons explain how to avoid that.

Quick Summary

Charles Cook shares 32 lessons learned from PostHog’s journey. The main idea is that growth should not come at the cost of culture, focus, or curiosity. In hiring, optimism beats skill, and keeping small, strong teams works better than rapid expansion. Feedback should help, not slow, people down. Clear ownership of tasks and fair pay are non-negotiable if you want to keep a healthy culture.

In product and engineering, PostHog found that small teams under six people scale best. Product market fit is not a one time win - it changes with users and tech. Talking to users constantly keeps assumptions in check. They also discovered that goals focused on shipping (getting things done) work better than OKRs (objective based systems). AI is useful only when solving real, specific problems.

In marketing and sales, they learned that fun, opinionated content still wins, even with enterprise buyers. You don’t need to copy big companies’ tone or chase every channel. Focus on what works and keep your brand human. Attribution (tracking what causes growth) will never be perfect, and that’s fine.

Key Takeaways

• Hire optimists, not just experts.
• Keep teams small and give one clear owner per problem.
• Stay close to users - assumptions age fast.
• Focus on shipping, not perfection or OKRs.
• Don’t overcomplicate marketing; enterprises are humans too.
• Focus on a few marketing channels that work well.
• Accept that attribution is always messy.
• Keep your brand personality even as you scale.

What to do

• Audit your team for optimism and ownership gaps.
• Revisit who your ideal customer is every quarter.
• Replace stretch goals with concrete shipping goals.
• Run small, focused teams instead of big committees.
• Let marketing be bold and human, even for big clients.
• Choose 2-3 key marketing channels and master them.
• Stop chasing perfect attribution - go for what’s good enough.
• Keep your feedback real and in plain language.

‍