HogMail #15

Oct 27, 2022

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Welcome to HogMail, our newsletter featuring the best of the PostHog blog, tutorials, product guides, and curated articles on building great products and companies. We send it every two weeks. Signup here so you don't miss it.

#posthog-blog

🙌 CEO diary: How we made something people want: It's one thing to build something, it's another to build something that people want. CEO James Hawkins shares his and Tim's journey to building PostHog.

🛠 Building an open source data stack: You really can replace Segment, Looker, Zapier and more with open source data tools. Did we mention PostHog is open source?

🦔 5 essential PostHog apps for new users: An introduction to the world of PostHog apps. They're small and powerful, just like... hedgehogs? It's a power-to-weight ratio thing.

#tutorials-and-guides

🔎 Tracking pageviews in single-page apps: All the ways to track pageviews in single-page apps (SPA) using PostHog.

📉 How to calculate and lower churn rate with PostHog: Master using session recordings, cohorts, and actions to lower churn.

#good-reads

The Case Against Collaboration by Paul Taylor, makes some interesting points about the limits of collaboration on creativity:

  • Research by MIT found that brainstorming sessions "reduced creativity" because they lead to incremental modifications, rather than radical and potentially superior solutions.

  • "A meta-analytic review of over 800 teams indicated that individuals are more likely to generate a higher number of original ideas when they don’t interact with others."

  • Collaboration is best used to solve complex problems that require diverse expert opinions.

  • At PostHog, we find successful offsites and hackathons are built on preparation. Plan ahead. Set expectations early. Ask people to come up with ideas before the offsite so they have time to think.

Writing better error messages by Jenni Nadler, on how Wix changed the way they wrote error messages. Takeaways:

  • "Oops! Something went wrong" and similar jovial messages are just annoying and aggravate users. Be clear about exactly what went wrong.

  • Offer solutions. If there's a potential way to fix the problem, suggest it. If there isn't, make it easy to get help.

  • Fixing bad error messages requires shared responsibility across teams and roles. Wix created a cross-function team just to tackle error handling, and reviews them constantly.

How has Tesla generated unparalleled operating leverage? by Aakash Gupta, which looks at how Tesla's success is supported by controlling costs:

  • "Most companies spend too much on R&D + SG&A [sales, general & admin]. Tesla doesn’t. As a result, it has unparalleled operating leverage."

  • Tesla increased R&D spend in 2021 by 71% by funding R&D through revenue increases alone, holding its total R&D spend at just 5% of revenue. Meta, by comparison, spends 21% of revenue on R&D.

  • Thanks in large part to Elon's fame, Tesla doesn't spend much on paid advertising. Most startups don't have an Elon, but focusing on the most cost-effective marketing channels, such as SEO and word-of-mouth, prevents overspending. Tesla is a product-led growth company.

  • Tesla went from making 100k cars in 2017 to nearly 1 million in 2021 (a 9x increase), but only increased headcount from 37k to 99k (a 3x increase). Keeping headcount under control lead to a huge increase in margins. This is vital for startups to achieve default alive status .

#random