How to Be an Unhinged $1.4B Unicorn

[00:00:01]Welcome, where we delve further down the martekch rabbit hole and try to make sense of it. Postthog built a $ 1.4 billion company on one idea. Stop guessing. Measure everything. They sell analytics. So here's the question for today. Why is Post Hog's own brand the hedgehog? The weirdness and the whole thing people fight for online measured by Slackbot and good vibes. So, a little bit about my guests today. First, we've got Lahie Coxin, who is Post Hog's lead graphic designer, and was the first creative hire, posted her portfolio on Twitter, and was contacted by Post Hog's founder 24 hours later. Now, she spends her days designing the brand and drawing hedgehogs doing silly things. Cannot wait to know what that message was from the founder.

[00:00:51]And we have Joe Martin, an in order. He has been a clown, a mor cleaner, a chainsaw salesman, a tech journalist, a content consultant, and a product marketer. That's quite the multi-hyphen it. He joined Post Hog as the 10th employee in first marketing hire. Back when the product was analytics only. Now the marketing lead, he is responsible for keeping the brand as weird as it was when the company was worth nothing.

[00:01:18]Welcome and thank you both for being here.

[00:01:20]>> Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:23]>> Excited to have you. So, let's dive into some quick rapid fire just to like warm up. All right. What is one word for Posthog's brand voice? Both of you.

[00:01:35]>> Playful.

[00:01:36]>> That's a good one. Unfiltered.

[00:01:39]Oo, I like that a lot. Okay. What is the most Postthog thing that Post Hog has ever shipped? Whether it's marketing, product, doesn't matter. I would say Deskco, which was like a little like micro computer developer toy we made just because someone in the company had a 3D printer and a dream.

[00:01:59]>> That's a good one. I'm going to go completely the opposite end. The James Hawkins doll we made or April Fools. It was like a Barbie 3D printed to look exactly like our founder.

[00:02:11]>> Terrifying when I found one in a cupboard at work one time. [laughter] >> Oo, that's a little scary.

[00:02:18]Um, what is one thing you'd never do for the brand, no matter how good?

[00:02:22]>> Host a webinar.

[00:02:24]>> That's a good one. I thought you were going to say wear a another hat.

[00:02:28]>> I do wear a lot of hats.

[00:02:29]>> I was actually I don't think there isn't anything I wouldn't probably do for the brand, but webinar's pretty good. So, can I steal Joe's? [laughter] >> You'd probably not attend my webinar.

[00:02:40]>> True.

[00:02:41]>> You might design things for it, though.

[00:02:44]>> Yeah.

[00:02:44]>> But would it just be a webinar, not called a webinar? Maybe >> it would have to be a really good idea for us to get away with that.

[00:02:50]>> That's fair. [laughter] >> Okay. What is a favorite piece of internal push pack you ignored?

[00:02:56]>> This one is easy for me because I bring it up all the time. I started like pushing on email marketing post, building our like nurture campaigns and things like that and Raquel from our exec team told me like very bluntly, email marketing doesn't work for developers and consistently remind her that she was wrong. That is an easy one to prove wrong. I'm glad you did. What about you, Ly?

[00:03:20]>> I think trying to be an engineer. I ignored that and it's actually worked for me.

[00:03:27]>> Last but not least, in terms of rapid fire, if Post Hog were a person at a party, what would they be doing? What would they be wearing? You name it. I feel like we like our product does so many things that if we would probably be some sort of manic force at the party doing everything all at once. We'd be trying to sit in a corner and play guitar while also mixing drinks and hosting and talking to people.

[00:03:52]>> I was thinking more like someone wearing like a garishly loud Hawaiian shirt and they're first to like be on the dance floor cuz they don't really care what people think. But maybe that's [laughter] just >> that's that's just you describing James off season.

[00:04:11]>> You guys are anything but conventional, anything but typical B2B. And so I'm curious, is there a playbook that you set out to ignore? So like you've already mentioned webinars are a no-go that's boring and very corporately B2B.

[00:04:26]>> I don't think there's anything we like purposely like set out to ignore. The closest thing to that would be deciding very early on. James and and Tim, I think James especially, decided that we didn't want to do the traditional B2B sales motion at all. Um, and we kind of built the sales side of business very very differently and made everything in the product as self-s served as we could on the marketing side. Like I think Lotty can correct me if she thinks I'm wrong, but for a very long time, the first I would say like two or three years at least. I think I was the only marketer at Postgog who actually had any experience working in marketing.

[00:05:06]Everyone else was either like formerly an engineer, they worked in different parts of the industry. It was kind of we didn't know a lot of the time what to ignore. we were building things from scratch and not trying to like throw out a conventional playbook because we didn't know that those conventional playbooks really existed. I said I was the only person with double years of marketing experience maybe and nobody listens to me any >> I would also say that like I think from the getgo the ethos of like the brand was when everyone goes right we go left like we were trying to be obnoxiously different maybe not obnoxiously but I don't know when the majority of like corporate SAS companies were doing white papers we were like we're never going to do that or if we are we're going to into on toilet roll or something.

[00:05:55]>> Just zigging while everyone's zagging.

[00:05:58]>> Exactly. And like purposely trying to be different to stand out. Otherwise, you're just shouting into the void basically because there's just so many that do the same thing.

[00:06:08]>> Okay. What's the one editorial instinct newsroom culture has that marketing actively tries to beat out of people?

[00:06:16]>> I think probably like around collaboration and keeping things organized. Journalism is often like very fastm moving and chaotic but at the end of the day like I worked in magazine publishing and magazine has a strict deadline everything has to be ready for print day there is no room for error the paper has already been bought the art has to be laid out it's a very like regimented process and marketing specifically at postto has taught me that things can be fine if you just let go of the wheel a lot more that you don't need to keep everything as organized and I think this extends into collaboration as well. Collaboration at Postgog is almost a dirty word a lot of the time and we get that makes me sad.

[00:06:59]>> Well, I mean it's not that we don't collaborate. It's more that it's like not performative collaboration and like trusting everyone around you autonomously do their best. And it's it's a step further along the journey of like ask for forgiveness, not permission. Um like you shouldn't ask for forgiveness or permission. You just go and do the thing. But it's definitely a marked change from, you know, trying to get editor sign off and art editor buy in, things like that in journalism, trying to keep a fixed content calendar.

[00:07:28]>> So, we've talked about your journalist background, but Lahi, I want to talk about how a teacher once told you that you weren't very good at art and you should try something else. First of all, nice you to that teacher. I hope you feel better. How much of what you do today is still on some level proving that teacher wrong?

[00:07:49]>> I think I'm past it. I think I'd let that drive go a bit. Um, I definitely was like my main driving force when I was younger. It led me down the path of doing graphic design and art at school.

[00:08:03]But I think now in a much more healthy post therapy mindset um I think what drives me now is trying to be the best I can be in my field to for context um I was something like nine or 10 like very I know I know I know right >> oh my god teachers forget how impactfully important they are >> I know I think went to some kind of like silly the pushy private school at that age. That summer after being told I shouldn't focus on it, I remember every single day practicing drawing something.

[00:08:42]And I think after that it got to a point where I was like, "Oh, okay. You can put in the time and improve your craft." I think that's when I caught the bug of like I can be better better at this. I don't think looking back I'm like that was the catalyst, but I don't think that's like my drive. Love her, hate her, I'm here now because of her. So, speaking of art and doing it over and over and over, there are now 18 versions of a hedgehog. At what number did you think this is it? This is the one, but then also talk yourself back out of it and what changed between the early attempts and the one that is well known to everyone.

[00:09:25]>> I think it just depends. I know for me it depended upon if it felt right. Um, and I felt like it wasn't properly representing like, oh, sounds so great, the spirit of the brand or like I wanted the company culture to be encapsulated channeling the energy of like certain people at the company. So like the engineers or like how chaotic or like how passionate they are on because we have quite a lot of people who work for us that are quite silly. and I felt like going through all the the ranges of the hedgehogs, they weren't expressive enough or they weren't friendly or approachable enough and like it just didn't sit right. So, I just kept on iterating until it did. And I even like recently started adding in eyebrows to some of them. Um, well, all of them from now have eyebrows. So, it's constantly evolving to be honest. I don't think we're still I'd love to say that we're like we're there. Um, but I can imagine it will have various evolutions going forward. So >> I might be talking about like aiming for a much greater sense of humanity like fairly consistent consistently as well cuz when I joined like it's we've had 18 versions of the hedgehog but like we had things before the hedgehog as well. When I joined uh I remember the the mascot at that point was like humans lots of humans with TVs and computer monitors for heads. Yeah, we were experimenting with that and Lotty was I thought that was cool at the time and Ly was very adamant that no, it felt aggressive, felt oppressive. It didn't feel very human. You wanted it to be more personable. There's been a lot of iteration.

[00:11:09]>> Humans always called Max or where did Max the name come from?

[00:11:13]>> Yeah, sure. So, Max is I think it was my first post dog offsite. We went to Porto at this point. There was I think maybe like 20 of us at the company and it was we were talking just generally what should the name be for the hedgehog. I think I suggested someone suggested that we should like name it after someone in the company in some sense. Phil Leetta who was our developer advocate at the time mentioned that his I think his eldest child was called Max and that just felt right. So I we just said Max.

[00:11:48]I think Lian was the one I was like, "Yes, Max, it's that." And then we It just kind of stuck. It was a very short conversation, but like the amount of legacy it's had.

[00:11:58]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> I love that though. And okay, Ly, what is the most ridiculous thing you've seen drawn made Max do? Like, and did it almost get vetoed or you kind of have that I'm going to do it and see what happens?

[00:12:14]>> One that got vetoed. Well, technically, I don't know if it's vetoed because I probably would draw it anyway and then people would be like, "We won't use this because it's too dark." Recently, we've been talking about AI and how AI can have harnesses on them. Can you tell that I'm not technical when I speak about this?

[00:12:31]>> It's a good thing.

[00:12:32]>> Classic shapes and colors over here. Oh, and also in the AI speak, they talk about sandboxes. So, I was like, it would be really funny to do a hedgehog in a sandbox wearing some kind of semi inappropriate harness. [laughter] And yeah, that one didn't really get quite a lot of backup from people being like, yeah, you should do it. They were like, maybe not. I think it's funny. I'd admit the sandbox for sure. I can maybe understand the hesitation on the latter piece, but >> I think this question is dangerous because of how rare it is for something to get vetoed as well. like my favorite one managed data warehouse product that's in in beta at the moment and it's very the managed data warehouse is a very exciting product but data engineering and data warehouses aren't very cool it's hard to talk about them at least in a way that makes them seem cool so Lizzie who is the product marketer all about products came up with the idea of a campaign around how sexy data is data warehouses are sexy and as a result latte ended up drawing a version of Max the Hedgehog wearing like is it like 6 in transparent crystal heels and on like a stripper pole platform.

[00:13:46]>> A scandalous Max. I like it.

[00:13:48]>> Yeah. Swinging around the headline columns in all the right places.

[00:13:52]That was certainly out there.

[00:13:53]>> And did that is that going to go live?

[00:13:55]Went live.

[00:13:56]>> That's live. Yeah, I think it went live at the weekend. Yeah.

[00:13:59]>> Wait, that's amazing. Okay. You [snorts] have a Slack channel called Do More Weird. What was the last idea in there that got rejected and it should have been and it better not be this one? I actually feel like we don't really reject many if any doom or more weird make it mean [ __ ] And I would say that anyone who has like the determination or the passion to like get a project over the line and they can do it, it will happen. It's amazing. I don't want to say like maybe no idea is too weird.

[00:14:35]Joe, maybe like it's Jacket clear too bad.

[00:14:40]>> The challenge with do more weird is like we try and put the emphasis now more on the the do part like you every everyone we don't want it to just be a oh wacky ideas kind of thing. It's more like we try and view the channel I think as a place to like socialize ideas and get buy in and then once you have got that buy in then you just go and do it. you don't need anyone's permission to do more we things that don't really kind of no one cotton's on to they'll end up moving forward because the person who is who's had the idea is very passionate about this I think pavl in our billing team is at the moment trying to look at making a post mobile a cell phone network just to support post employees when we travel for work um because he thought that would be an interesting project he posted that and I was like yeah we're probably never going to do that I'm not going to respond this and now now he's he's apparently doing it.

[00:15:33]>> One of the weirdest ideas that I know was discussed a lot that did not get moved forward recently was in the UK we have a like a children's TV character called Mr. Blobby who is like this big inflatable jelly man thing. Um and the original costume for Mr. Blobby became available to buy and someone wanted to buy it because Mr. The blobby is also the internal code name for part of our like blob ingestion system.

[00:16:03]>> I love that connection so much.

[00:16:06][laughter] >> We did look at buying it, but in the end I don't think we pulled the trigger.

[00:16:11]>> Pretty sure someone's put in a bit.

[00:16:16]Yeah, I'm I just nothing gets vetoed.

[00:16:20]>> Okay, shifting gears a little bit towards really the brand identity and I assume there's a brand handbook of some sort because I don't remember where in my research, but I found it said something along the lines of be rogue, sarcastic, memey, and unhinged. Has anything actually ever been pulled back? What crossed the line?

[00:16:42]It sounds like very little. Um, rogue, sarcastic, mimi, and unhinged certainly sounds like something we would use to describe it, but I don't know if we actually have a a defined statement on what the brand is. The only thing I can think of that has maybe crossed the line once. So, one of the other things that we talk about a lot is not shaming or like poking fun at competitors. We try and like on in all of those conversations take the high road. Um, and one thing that I did that I know crossed the line at one point was I was writing a a product page kind of for I can't remember what product it is now, but um, and had a comparison chart of like this feature is present in this competitor and not present in this one and is present in post and at the very bottom of it I put a note say like a line on the chart that said like boring blue typical tech website and it was a tick for everyone else in a crossoot post talk and that caused a little bit of discussion internally where we were like we pushed it live and then and then we looked at it again and we're like ah this actually just it feels mean-spirited. I was aiming for like a sarcastic kind of knowing week and it actually came off quite aggressive. So we just like it was live for a day or two and then we just very easily pulled that and we don't really begrudge people for making mistakes too much stuff. One of my my favorite things since we're talking about um Slack channels um minute ago like one of my favorite things at work is something that Paul Damra from our exec team and I started we have a slack channel called mistakes were made which is like a a private Slack channel that started with just him and me in it and now whenever someone makes a mistake and we have to roll something back we have to do an apology or something gets messed up we just add them to the channel quietly. Um, and the idea is like it's not to try and shame them, but it's so if someone has made a mistake and they might be feeling bad about it, they get added to a channel filled with other people who are like, "Yeah, I've been there. Don't worry about it."

[00:18:40]>> That's a a really nice addition to like a post incident review or postmortem.

[00:18:45]It's like, you know what? You're not alone in this. It can feel really isolating at the time.

[00:18:51]>> Yeah, it feels very isolating. But I think the beautiful thing about that channel is that over time, everyone's going to get added to it. Nobody doesn't make mistakes.

[00:18:59]It's very true. I think people forget it and a lot of boring companies don't realize [laughter] it's allowed and it's actually sometimes a good thing. Okay, so your CEO has put it directly. The direction of travel for a B2B company is that you get more boring as you get older in scale. Totally agree. You guys have raised nearly $200 million across seven rounds and are now a unicorn at $1.4 billion of valuation. Where do you think you are on that arc? And how would you even know if you'd started backsliding?

[00:19:30]>> We've been very privileged and um lucky to be able to raise so much money. I don't think raising money is really like we don't view that as a a metric of success for the journey that we're on at all. Like we raise money because we might want to do something in the future or we think it is a good strategic time to do it. But our I think it was our series C which was like a 10 million raise was strategically important to the future of the company at one point. But on the marketing side and the brand side, we just forgot to announce that.

[00:20:00]Every other company I've ever worked at would do, here's a press release and we're going to try and get them tech crunch and we'll do Wall Street Journal thing. And at Post Dog, until we raised our series D much later on, we didn't even realize that we had forgotten to announce it. And this guy leads me to my second point as well, which is the part Lotty is not going to like because I think to be very honest, I think Lotty keeps us honest on a lot of this stuff.

[00:20:23]It's not just Lotty. I think also Heidi as well um who's the other the illustrator in the team like the graphics team ends up working on a lot of these sorts of like announcements and projects they are often very tied in to what is um important and getting attention at postto right now and as Lotty alluded to earlier is not an engineer she is not a tech investor out there who is really tied into enterprise software trends and think and I think that is actually really valuable because it makes someone who is within that cycle like a great bell weather for like I don't understand what this is. I don't understand why this is important. And when someone starts asking those questions, it's a great prompt internally to be like actually yeah, is this important? Is this interesting?

[00:21:07]What would be the interesting way to like communicate the story? And as a product marketer like working on some of these announcements from the other end that helps challenge me to easy way to solve a lot of problems when you're announcing a feature or announcing a product might be to like do a standard press release and a list of features but when you're being challenged um in that way you have to get creative in response and I think that's how we know that we aren't sliding into like a enterprise B2B IBM sort of tone or >> no but It it's true and I think a lot of companies become their own echo chamber of well this person gets it so it's fine. It's actually no the diversity of thought and background is what makes this interesting and also approachable.

[00:21:51]One other thing to add to that context Charles is our if we come up with a fun marketing campaign, he'll be like speak to someone outside of Post Hog who doesn't know what Post Hog is. Run it past them and if they actually think it's funny, then we're in the money and if it's not then you sort of have to take away the sort of like oh just because Post Hog thinks it's funny. It's a good gut check. Okay, I want to talk a little bit more nerdy and under the hood. So, a lot of you mentioned shapes and colors previously. I want to have you walk me through the actual visual language. Like, what are specific choices that make something unmistakably Max, Post Hog, you name it.

[00:22:32]>> Love this question cuz we're also like going through a bit of a a brand refresh at the moment. So, I don't even know what makes Post I mean I do, but I don't I guess first thing first I would say is bright bold colors. Uh we've got sort of a a color scheme of around seven sort of key colors that we've continually used since Cory Water joined. Uh he's the head of the website. He's also the guy behind the sort of amazing OS website that we have at the moment.

[00:23:06]So just want to give him >> big fan. [laughter] That's that was my initial understanding of what Post Hog was and that's huge. It's amazing.

[00:23:16]Specifically on the hedgehogs, it's sort of the line weight. It's the colors.

[00:23:20]It's I even use like a template every time. Heidi uses a template every time.

[00:23:24]So, we've got consistency there. And maybe just the visuals that we choose to create are specific. They're cheeky.

[00:23:34]They're out of the box thinking or at least like that's what we're like aiming for. Um, so yeah. Don't know if that's Oh, and fonts obviously. We've got like a few fonts that we sort of keep in rotation. Uh one that's a bit more serious for the website which at the moment is open roomed. Um and then one for marketing which is a bit more like punchy and shouty and loud which is called squeak which we I think we got custom made.

[00:24:02]>> It's an excellent name.

[00:24:03]>> It is. Yeah.

[00:24:04]>> My favorite font was still the first one that we had which was called Loud Noises and was just Lotty's handwriting.

[00:24:12]>> [laughter] >> That's kind of awesome though.

[00:24:14]>> Did you actually create it into a font or did you handw write everything?

[00:24:18]>> No, it's um I think it was because people wanted So before when we had hedgehogs, I would write little speech bubbles and they would have my handwriting writing messages. And when we got big enough, people were like, "Oh, I'd really like to write my own messages in your speech bubbles." but we didn't want to use the other fonts cuz they just didn't feel like they fit into the sort of visual environment that the hedgehogs were in. So, yeah, I went through the process of making a font.

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[00:25:25]And now back to the hot seat. I find it ironic that you're going through a rebrand and you say you don't know what the brand is and yet you distinctly very much do know what the brand is when you go through a refresh like what's going through your mind cuz I think in most contexts it's how do we change our colors or how do we change our logo and for me that's a very bloss rebrand and it's not really as a marketer it's very boring versus no let's actually reconceptualize or figure out what the next evolution of existing brand is how do we mature it or grow it or make it funnier, you name it.

[00:26:03]>> I think for us and as I can imagine other companies in this sort of time are going through is sort of this sort of age of shifting from before to now where sort of AI is taking a bit more of like a front seat in how companies are run and how they're seen.

[00:26:21]And I don't want to be like every other company where we're like, "Oh, we're jumping on the AI train and we're going to add in gradients and do the stuff, but I think there is something to be said in visuals being a big signifier to how you want to be seen and how you want your company to be seen progressing in the right direction." So, there's a reason why all these companies like Google are redoing all their icons XY Z horribly, might I add. Yeah, it was interesting to say the least. But I think for us in the rebrand, similar to I'm going to throw back to what we were talking about before about hedgehogs and going through what felt right. I think we're basically just going through the iterations of what could Post Hog look like in 2030 and how does Post Hog look in a sort of futuristic different way of working and so yeah, we're just having a lot of R&D at the moment. this really fun.

[00:27:20]>> It seems very It's a big lift but low urgency because typically when folks are going through a rebrand, they hire an agency. They're like, "All right, we need to get this done by this date cuz we're going to launch it and make that a campaign in of itself."

[00:27:36]How do you see this refresh? Is it something you consistently do every year or is it just when everyone feels it's time and you announce it or is it just part of the evolution and process?

[00:27:50]>> I mean the announcement we don't really care about. I think it's just going to it's just going to appear that to every brand marketing team ever. No one gives a >> no like realistically the the shining front and center product should be the product, right? um the website and the brand.

[00:28:11]>> Have a good product first though. Not everyone is there.

[00:28:13]>> Yeah. Um so we we will get to it when we get to it, but also good things take time.

[00:28:20]>> I think it's interesting. Uh one thing I would add to that though is that you said it it's low urgency. One of the things that I think often like from my experience, I've done a lot of rebrands and stuff at other companies and they've always felt like this is the the most timesensitive like we need to really get this out. we need to come up this is why eventually you would go to an agency because you can throw money at the problem to make it happen faster. I don't think feel that urgency in the same way at Osoft like this is a I feel and I hope everyone else feels that the rebrand is actually when it's in this R&D stage it's very very low stakes work we should be ready to make as many mistakes as possible and like if we spend a year working on this sort of like visual refresh then it's we haven't wasted a year it's been a great use of time to spend um as long as is needed on something like this and lying and hiding and Corey and Eli as well like continue just playing and iterating until they find something that really captures the imagination. And I think that is certainly to me a unique part of those dogs approach is like being willing to take the time to do something like that.

[00:29:28]>> It's definitely an unusual privilege. I feel like there's very few companies where you're given not only the autonomy but the time and the resources to just marinate. It's a very atypical approach in the best way [laughter] more companies should learn to build on that. Is that just part of a company culture? Is that how it's always been?

[00:29:51]Was there a specific influence in that?

[00:29:53]>> We accept that it is evolving and we have a mechanism through which it can evolve. Every two years, every other marketing sorry company offsite we all basically discuss the company values and the culture as a group. I remember a good example of this is when I started one of the the values at that time was like everybody codes because we wanted everybody to use technical tools. We wanted everyone to be able to ship stuff to the product and after two years I think we had the the discussion and realized that like not everybody actually needs to code. It's not valuable for everyone. And I talk about this a lot. You know an artist in a company like Postg shouldn't aim to be the worst engineer. They should aim to be the best artist. and we changed the the value and so the culture is kind of like at this point I think 6 years into postto's lifespan um I think is shaped mainly by the people at the company because we've iterated on I think at this point every single value you should constantly be asking why not now why aren't we doing this now why aren't we shipping this now and I think gives us like a high sense of urgency to move things quickly when we think we are able to it also gives us an affordance to like hold back when we need to. So some why not now if I asked Ly like why not now? Why aren't we launching this rebrand now is very valid for lot to say like it's not ready yet.

[00:31:19]>> It's not. [laughter] >> Whereas on the engineering side like it's often the the flip side of the same challenge is like why can't we launch this now? And the answer might be well it's not ready yet and we would say well yeah but is it ready for beta? Is it ready for alpha? Can we test it with someone? And that's for that propels us to like launch things into the product very very quickly.

[00:31:41]>> That makes sense. And I'm surprised the word weirdo has not come up in any of this. [laughter] And I mean that in the best possible way. While I'm from Dallas, like I I'm sure you guys have heard the adage like keep Austin weird and it's the best part of Austin. And so when you guys are hiring, you filter specifically for weirdos, aka people who come from an opinionated position. even if you may think that they might be wrong and with a different mindset but the same sense of taste. How do you test and curate for taste without just hiring people who either remind you of themselves are really good at pretending?

[00:32:19]>> I don't think I've ever hired anyone that's reminded me of me. Um, everyone I've hired is is far far better. I think basically the hiring process at postto is basically designed for this and I think is very heavily informed by the experience that lot the first four hires post went through where you know they started with an initial conversation and interview and then that turned into I think lot was it like a month of contract work?

[00:32:49]>> Yeah, it was sort of just like freelancing just to like test how you worked. That is also that idea that okay what we need to test or people actually doing the work is really important. The way we do that at posttop or have done it since did a month of contract work because not everyone's going to do a month of contract work as part of their interview um is we do what we call super days. In a typical company, they would test this stuff by they would give you a task. You go and wait and you do the task at the weekend and as a result, the company gets no insight into how you did the work and like what the process is and how long you took and the candidate loses their weekend and it's just a rubbish situation around. So at Postto what we do is we give people we run a super day which is a paid simulated day's work in postto. You get to come in, you get to meeting to meet the team.

[00:33:39]You get the opportunity to like it gives you a task that is indicative of your job. You get Slack group where you can like ask for feedback and chat to us throughout the day and ask questions if things are unclear. And we can like chat to you about how you're getting on in your process. We get to get to see you doing the work. We actually get to test you out. And taste is something that we screen for there in the the final result. It's not the only thing we we screen for, but it's definitely a really important part of it. Um, often in like one of the things you said as well is like people that opinionated position even if we think it's wrong and that's equally important. Someone could have a very brave bold idea and that's what we want to see. Doesn't matter if it's like uh we've tried that once before, we didn't like it or we thought about it but we don't want to do that. That's not great post hoggy. Um, it's looking for people who are going to try something that's a bit new and brave.

[00:34:31]>> I feel like it's very brave and also the wisest decision a company can consider.

[00:34:38]There's nothing worse in my experience being asked to do one of those assessments unpaid get either a certain amount of time or too much time where it's overwhelming like, oh no, how much time should I dedicate to this? And so on behalf of all the candidates in the world, I appreciate that you actually pay for that person to come in and do an actual simulation because >> it's important.

[00:35:01]>> I think another part of it that is like personally important to me as well is that we're actually we're testing for your ability to actually do the job. Um, but I've done plenty of product marketing interviews in the past where I've had a task that I've spent my weekend doing and then I have to present it and I have to like make a proposal and a pitch. That's never going to be part of someone's job. People are often surprised, but they come into a super day, they do the task and like create this deliverable and then it's just kind of and it's like we care much more that you can decide what to do and then do the thing. We don't care that you can give like a really polished presentation about what your proposal is and your five-step plan, your sources and your references. No, we just want you to like come up with an idea and then do the idea. Those are the two things we we kind of test on.

[00:35:52]>> That makes a lot of sense. I know I I've never had the privilege of having a like a super day where you test someone out, but anytime I interview, I always ask questions. I don't actually care about the answer. I care about how they get to that answer. And I know I want to hear them talk out loud and walk me through it. [snorts] Like yes, I might have a preferred answer, but I care more about the process because to your point, if you are able to do the work, you'll be able to come create the outcome no matter what. It's more just are you collaborative, are you thoughtful, are you thinking through all the different aspects or you just thinking through a case study and you know very point A to point B which is only getting harder and harder to combat with AI. So I think to your point that inperson component, what is the single smartest brand decision Post Hog has made that most companies wouldn't have the nerve to make?

[00:36:43]>> You've got a better answer here. I think probably like I would say keeping the website lives the new version of it I think there are so our new website with this kind of OS design um is quite old it's quite out there I think really really cool and welldesigned it is without a doubt it has some friction in it when you use it because it is just it's different it's breaks a lot of patterns for what people expect a website to do when we first launched it we immediately got push back from people seeing it like Nowadays we get a lot of praise for it and it is very widely recognized and celebrated but at the time people like the first I would say week really strongly disliked it. It's that old accent, you know, if you want to make enemies of people, try and change something >> for sure.

[00:37:29]>> And uh we had changed something and we kind of made enemies and there was a lot of discussion about conversion rates and how to track them and what to track and like that was hotly debated, but we give a lot of credit to Corey um and Eli from the website team were very confident to stand by that decision and like no, this is a cool website like give it time.

[00:37:52]this is going to be good and we can look at the data and we can discuss it and we can make changes but like we have very high confidence in this >> it's a differentiator for sure >> I think yeah the differentiator was certainly like Corey uh it can be quite outspoken and direct that was what he was channeling um for the better in this situation of holding his ground so I think he was very open to the feedback of how can we make this better um and he was right rightfully closed to the idea of we should discard this entirely. Um it's something I talk about a lot with the product marketing team as well when we hire new people now. It's informed in part partly by this um this example Cory set. I can't remember who said it. The idea that when someone tells you something is wrong, they're probably right. And when they tell you how to fix it, they're probably wrong. And that was kind of what was happening here. Was were there problems with the new website? Yeah, probably. Should we completely revert to the old website?

[00:38:50]No, absolutely not.

[00:38:52]>> I love that. And so you've kind of or I've referenced it from a hiring perspective or like reaching out perspective, but has the brand voice or brand visuals ever directly driven a business outcome you can point to?

[00:39:05]Whether it's a new client, a new customer, a piece of inbound, you name it.

[00:39:10]>> I think a really good example of this is all of our success within YC as well.

[00:39:15]like Y Combinator as their internal like BookCase platform where there are deals for other Y Combinator startups and Postgog has we have consistently been in the top five. I think now we are the number one deal um available to Y Combinator teams um ahead of like much much bigger businesses um that are competing and try and put offers together. And one of the things the merch that we offer is part of it. Uh we are constantly refreshing the merch catalog and Rotty and Heidi do and Kendall as well do great work keeping that up to date and keeping it interesting and fashionable and like brave. Um and adding quirky items to it.

[00:39:58]The emergency business tie that founders can keep in their desk for when a shareholder comes by. Things like that.

[00:40:05]And you would be astonished how many emails I get each week from founders in San Francisco or co-founders of of other YC teams who have like signed up to our YC deal and or because they have seen like oh I saw someone walking around with your t-shirt like I'd love to get one. Can you tell me about it? And you >> recently uh one of our sales people went to Japan to try and sort of close a deal or better a relationship with Fujifilm and they brought them a bunch of like Max plushies and they said that one of the core reasons why they loved Post Hog so much aside from the product was the fact that they we had such a good mascot because in Japan they really like having mascots for companies. Yeah. I think we'd made some like custom Godzilla X post hog business cards uh for them to like give business cards to cuz that's also a cultural thing we do in Japan and they loved it. So I don't know it's it's the small spot joy things for me with I think it's one of the most important tenants of marketing and no one remembers it like the purpose shouldn't be an outcome. The purpose should be be memorable in a delightful way and as a result the business comes. But speaking of how does the business come there is a product thesis Joe that you have that is instrumental in everything. You don't guess however ly you've described brand success as not a formal metric more qualitative than quantitative it just works. You guys sell a data platform.

[00:41:45]Does this contradiction bother you both at all? And why or what would it take to actually measure any of this?

[00:41:53]>> We are a data platform. We track everything internally. Um, and what data we don't have. It's either because it is impossible to get it or it doesn't exist. So we track everything from page views and doc views on the website through to like how often someone has engaged with hedgehog mode or pressed a particular button or rage clicked on particular pages how they've activated MCP or signed up to a beta this stuff.

[00:42:23]Um and even when it gets like really difficult to track something like our out of home advertising have agents now like going through our we have a brand mentions channel which is like social listening um to one we're mentioned on Twitter and LinkedIn and so on and we will try and sort that into various signals too does it stress me out or like does it strike me that there's a contradiction like I think the contradiction is really really healthy and good I'm personally like that people need to remember that art should exist for its own state like regardless of whether it moves the needle and there are plenty of places within post and specifically to work with like what's where we can just rely on that text maybe this isn't going to result in a a better conversion or something or a bump in conversion that is really noticeable but maybe it's worth doing just because it's worth doing like a good example of how we've tested this in the past would be in our emails So, I did a test maybe like 18 months ago where I substituted um all of our email marketing. I took out all of the Max Hedgehog graphics that Rotty had done and I replaced them with like product screenshots and like more technical kind of stuff that actually showed the product in being used and compared like did clickthrough rates drop, did conversions change, was was there any noticeable difference? And the response was like I think there was like there was a slight 1% improvement on Lotty's versions of it.

[00:43:58]People like did slightly prefer those versions um in those emails. Um I remember thinking at the time even if they didn't actually this is a stupid thing to test. I shouldn't have like invested that time in doing that. we should use Lotty's art because Lotty's art is art and that is worth like investing in and supporting and using and data tells us one part of the story and we can look at that but we will also like if data doesn't tell us what we intuitively know to be true or worthwhile um throwing it out is completely about the time >> I also have one little small things to add to Joe's point which I do agree with I also think that brand isn't about doing one thing that's going to push the needle. It's like, as you were talking, I was imagining like how to describe this. And I feel like it's sort of a dripping of water into like a bucket. And it's not about the one little drip that's going to like push the needle. It's like everything you do will group together to make what people know and love as a brand. Um, so it's not about like doing one-off things. It's consistency throughout a long period of time, building trust and rapport with users to then getting to where you are.

[00:45:22]>> Normally the the approach we take to ideas at postwork is like ideas are very fragile. You should always like try and support them. But Ly was suggesting at the time that we should change the name of maps. And I had a a strong reaction that we should not do that. Um because I agree with what you just said. It is like it's a dripping like I build values through consistency over time and we need to like really stick to that consistency over a very long period for it to to build that down. Like changing the name of Max to me now would be like undoing so much of what we've built. Um it's not to say we would never do it.

[00:46:02]Maybe we would.

[00:46:04]>> We're not changing the name. It's all right.

[00:46:06]>> Maybe it just means you get to introduce another character into the mix.

[00:46:10]>> Exactly.

[00:46:12][laughter] >> Very few companies think about that bucket. I really think about >> every company, every brand as a relationship. You wouldn't expect in a long-term relationship just to be like, "Hi, buy this. Hi, upgrade this." You would actually want to get to know that brand. Actually identify with their values of some sort. And slowly over time because it's top of mind positive.

[00:46:35]I think of it as like soft touch points of positivity, delight, you name it, that eventually it builds a stronger relationship where when you do finally send something that might be a little bit more salesforward. I'm getting a little bit more technical. Do you particularly Joe think product market fit makes boldness possible or does boldness help you find PMF faster?

[00:46:58]>> I think both are true. All I can talk about in that regard is like my experience at Postto. And I think at Postto we knew we were going to be bold no matter what just because of like the type of company that we we wanted to build I feel and like the type of people we were hiring and the bets we were wanting to make. I think even James and Tim the founders like pivoted through like five different ideas while they were in YC. But I also think that the inverse can be true. Boldness is really a reflection to me not of it's neither a reflection of product market fit nor directly fueled by product market fit.

[00:47:35]It's a reflection of the people within the company more than anything else and how much you back yourself to make these these sorts of calls. Like I've worked at companies in the past that have said that they are very bold and have had like very ambitious plans and then they get into delivering them and it's really just turned out that they want to like change the logo or change the mission statement that's on the careers page that no one beats or something.

[00:48:03]>> Yeah. They kind of get lost lost in the sauce instead of the magic.

[00:48:07]>> Yeah. That's not boldness and it's it's not impacted by product market fit at all even though they think that is. So I think there isn't a hard and fast rule there.

[00:48:15]>> What do you and it could be from both of you foresee as an actual transferable lesson for other companies who are considering whether it's boldness first or boldness later. Is this solely a top- down option? It has to come from the top or can there be a ground swell towards?

[00:48:38]>> I think like my transferable lesson, the one thing that I like really wish more companies would do is like listen more closely to I say without means to be condescended like the younger people within the company and listen to like people who are actually on the ground floor doing the work and have mutual ideas. These are people who are often like well I think when the higher up the chain you go and the more entrenched you get into leadership positions the more incentive you have to like play it safe to keep doing what you know will work or what you've been informed will work before to delay decision making and to kind of just generally doubt everybody else around you. And it becomes very easy in that position to also like look down on you know younger people within a company or people who are like more on the ground floor than you are. I think like those are the people you should be listening to. Those are the people who are going to challenge you. Those are the people going to have fresh ideas, new ideas, new influences and references. Um and that's going to enable you to make more interesting decisions. Um, something else we talk about in the marketing team on that front is like all of us and the product marketers like we're all essentially at postto because we want to work on interesting problems and interesting challenges.

[00:49:56]The bad news is we keep getting them but the good news is is that we keep getting them and we have a lot of faith in the people around us to help solve them. So that would be my transferable lesson.

[00:50:08]>> What about you Ly?

[00:50:09]>> I would say that people whether they know it or not by people.

[00:50:16]And so I think it's worked really well for Post Hog to lean into the personalities of the people who build the company and people respond really well to that because we're being authentic. We're being honest, being unfiltered. And I think unhinged.

[00:50:33]>> Yeah. A little unhinged. And I think that's refreshing. I think a lot of companies are trying to be a certain way or act a certain way because they think that's going to get them success or be popular. But actually, I think if they were more authentic and put people's experience of how they will use your company or product first, they would get further.

[00:50:56]>> I think the through line to both of what you're saying is like humanity is the answer to all of it and it's not something you can Well, AI can help you, but >> AI can certainly do a lot. Um, like we use AI workflows certainly in the marketing team a lot, especially now that like you know, post dog. So, essentially what we sell is like self-driving um capabilities and stuff helps people build selfdriving products and so we we end up dog fooding and using a lot of these tools ourselves. But I think the thing that like having the people focus gives you is it like gives you a much clearer sense of empathy with your users and your audience. It gives you a sense of like established sense of taste and it gives you authenticity as Lotty said and like some of those things like you can arguably like guide an AI towards replicating a sense of taste but very hard to build an AI with like a good sense of intuition that you would trust.

[00:51:57]It's very difficult. There's no gun instinct there.

[00:52:00]>> There's just the average of everything else.

[00:52:02]>> Yeah, it's very difficult to believe that AI is going to have empathy, per se. It's going to have large amounts of data and that can work certain types of decision. You can make informed decisions in certain ways, but um there certainly like a lot of the tasteled work that we do that requires authenticity and like an actual a human behind it. um in some sense um AI might be a tool that they use to get the work done sometimes, but trying to focus on the human behind it is still the most >> to me it's the most interesting part of the challenge.

[00:52:36]>> Without a doubt, Joe Lah, this has genuinely been an unusual conversation and I mean that is the highest compliment. [laughter] Um you've made the case that personality isn't a campaign you can run. It's a posture you hold every single day under pressure and I appreciate you for holding that line in honesty here too.

[00:52:56][snorts] What is one thing listeners should steal from Post Hog? I think elevating and hiring more artists within the company and I don't just mean that in terms of Lotty and ID either but um taking a bet on the artistic role uh the the role of artistry in like everything that you do um as a company especially in the marketing side is really important. um student still is like transparency like transparency at postto is so so important and it helps us deliver and create a better art and better branding like we publish unless it involves like literal financial or personal information. We publish everything about what we do. You can go on to like our GitHub repos and see the conversations we are having about every single launch announcement, every single goal. What's our marketing strategy? How are we going to build this page? What's the process for like putting in a website request?

[00:53:53]How's that different from the video request system? All of the like process pains that we experience everything else.

[00:54:01]>> Mine was autonomy for employees. So, letting people cook when they feel like they're on to something exciting or important.

[00:54:12]>> I love that. And last but not least, before I let you go, is there another brand that you have your eye on that is making maybe similar waves? And from a creative side, I recently, literally last week at Config, heard about a company called Clay, and they've got a really fun branding around uh yeah, with like clay figures and stuff like that, which I thought was really refreshing and a good use of craft in this very slick uh techy world. I agreed. Bruno and the team have done a good job. And from my side, like the the first example that I always think of here is actually like an independent game developer called Blendo Games run by Brendan Chum.

[00:54:58]He's been consistently putting out games. And one thing that's always struck me about his work. I interviewed him back when I was a journalist. And one of the things that he said that I think has consistently like shaped his brand is that he basically he spent a long time early in his career working with a very limited set of tools, like very old tools that had been outdated.

[00:55:19]And he just happened to have an old computer and he had access to these tools and he never like got up to date into more modern systems. And so he learned to maximize the use of those tools and the restriction that he had put on himself and led to him making some very very creative choices. And as a result, like now 10 years later, his games look like wildly different to other types of games. His branding on his website looks completely different to everything that everyone else is building. Um, and I think about it a lot when we talk about like how do we stand out? What does it mean to like to stand out? Does that come from what are the challenges we can face? What are the challenges we face? And how do we like decide whether to overcome them or just like cope with them?

[00:56:03]>> I would love an intro. And last but not least, thank you so much. Where can folks find you, follow along for the journey, you name it.

[00:56:10]>> Postgog.com. For me, I I don't really do social media um beyond like LinkedIn where I am because of this generic name almost impossible to find.

[00:56:21]>> Oh, sorry. Really quickly, I'm going to shamelessly plug myself. So, it's Lotty Coxen on Twitter and I'm going to try put a bunch of Oh, there's another person. Hello. Amazing. So, thank you so much They built a $ 1.4 billion company telling everyone else to stop testing and measure everything. Turns out the thing that got them there was not measuring it nearly at all. Couple of takeaways from this just fascinating and fun and genuinely unusual conversation in the best way. So Post Hog did not reject a convention conventional playbook. They truly just never knew it existed, which means sometimes the most distinctive brands aren't built by rule breakers at all, which definitely goes against what I know. And instead, they're built by people who never learned the rules in the first place.

[00:57:12]It's a very counterintuitive claim in the whole conversation, but I'm a big fan and every brand differentiation talk assumes conscious rebellion. And this conversation inverted it entirely.

[00:57:26]Looking back, I probably would have asked very different questions ultimately. But that said, Joe ran a test, got the data, and concluded the test itself was the wrong call in the first place, which means data literacy and data worship are very different things. And coming from a marketing lead of a well-loved unicorn, this is the sharpest possible version of the data company can't measure is its brand. This entire episode is built around. It's not a contradiction. It's a more sophisticated position than most operators are willing to articulate. And lastly, brand governance at Post Hog isn't a process. It's a hiring filter, which means it's only replicable if you're willing to screen out a lot of people. This one is truly differentiating because it's the honest answer that every marketer asks after studying like, "How do we do blank at this company?" And the answer is probably you can't unless you're willing to pay the hiring cost. And so if anything, it's freeing to know that all these things are possible. However, you do have to prioritize them as a top-down choice. And with that, thank you so much for tuning in to Making Sense of Martekch. See you next time. A special thank you to Christine Marta, who edited this episode, and an extra special thank you to Jenna Carter for believing in this passion project meets business.

[00:58:45]Stay curious.