YC onboarding

As a YCombinator company ourselves, we want to support other YC companies that wish to use PostHog. As such, our onboarding process for YC companies is different and more extensive than our general process.

The YC deal

Our YC deal provides the following:

20 million events/month, free for 6 months (PostHog Cloud or Self Hosted)
Companies also get a $50 gift card to spend on our merch and dedicated support (i.e. a private Slack with our core team members).

For current batch YC companies, we also offer:

20 million events/month, free for a year (instead of 6 months)
Free group pairing session to help with setup
PostHog AirPods, a PostHog Timbuk2 Backpack, a $150 Open Collective gift card, or a $150 PostHog Merch gift card.
A referral scheme that lets you double-down on the above deal

Note: Batch-specific deals will be updated here as new batches come along.

Onboarding call

Inbound request sources

YC companies can reach out in different ways. Ideally, we will steer them towards the dedicated YC Onboarding page, but they may also reach out to us on yc@posthog.com.

Having received a demo request through one of these sources, schedule an appropriate 1-hour slot and ensure at least one person can certainly attend it.

Before the call

Ideally, we want users to have gotten started with PostHog before the demo call. From our YC Onboarding page:

Before the call, we recommend you sign up to our Cloud version and try installing our snippet on your website. Doing so would allow us to tailor the onboarding to your needs, leveraging data from your website instead of demo data. However, if you prefer to get a demo first, we'll give you access to a demo playground during our call.

Note: We recommend PostHog Cloud as a way to get started quickly, but it's up to them if they want to set up a self-hosted instance before the call. You should also help with this.

If users come to the call with a ready instance, we can focus more on their needs and setting up relevant views than a basic overview of the platform that they could have gotten without us.

The demo

When doing a demo of PostHog, you should prioritize using the following environments:

The client's instance or PostHog Cloud account (if they have one and are OK with this).
The PostHog Demo Environment
A local environment
PostHog Cloud

Read more about running demos on our dedicated page.

Bookmarklet

A super cool way of doing demos for websites and web apps is using the PostHog bookmarklet. This way, you can set up funnels, charts, and other views for the user (or, ideally, have them set it up themselves) by leveraging their own data. If done on their instance, some of these views might even be ready for them to start analyzing user data once "real events" start coming in.

To learn more about the bookmarklet, check out our Snippet Installation page.

Let the user drive

Always tailor the demo to the user specifically! Skip things they don't need and let them decide what they want to see. Be friendly and helpful, not salesy! Our goal is for these users to be able to use PostHog to improve their product.

After the call

If you have time left in the 1-hour slot, do this during the call - ensure the user is fully set up by the time the call is over.

You should:

1. Send a one-time giveaway

Customers have the following giveaway options. Some options have restrictions depending on the shipping address.

Giveaway	Eligible locations	How to share
AirPods or Timbuk2 backpack (Depending on stock availability)	US and Canada only	To create a one-time giveaway link: Login to Printfection Go to Campaigns -> Giveaways -> The PostHog YC Program. Click the Get New Link button and copy the link. Send the link to the YC contact and mark the link as sent in Printfection.
PostHog merch $150 gift card (Shopify)	Global	To create a giftcard in Shopify: Login to Shopify Select Products -> Gift cards from the left-hand menu Click Issue gift card Create a new customer via the Find or create a customer section Update the value to $150 and click Save
Open Collective $150 gift card	Global	To create a giftcard in Open Collective: Signin to Open Collective Go to the Gift Cards section within the PostHog org Click Create gift cards Set the amount to $150 and set a reasonably long expiry Choose to either send the customer the gift card via Open Collective or via a link Depending on the option chosen for the above step, create the gift card

Remind the YC contact that they will get another set of merch if they refer another company. All the other company needs to do is schedule a YC onboarding session and say that "Company X" referred them. Then, we'll double-merch both of them.

2. Set up billing

If they use PostHog Cloud, update their plan to the Startup plan using the Django Admin panel. Also, set should_setup_billing to True - this will prompt them to add card details (but assure them they won't get charged!)

If they will self-host PostHog, set them up with a one-year EE license (Paolo can help with this).

Ask them to confirm they've tagged themselves as using us, and send a direct link to the deal, so this is easy.

3. Set up HubSpot

After they've gotten set up, if they are a promising company, create a deal on the appropriate Hubspot pipeline.

Responsibilities

Cameron handles YC onboarding calls, and Charles manages Printfection, Open Collective, and Shopify.