PostHog
Changes to PostHog for Startups applications
Currently, users apply to PostHog for Startups via a form. They are supposed to sign up to a paid PostHog plan first, but they often don't. We (Simon) have to check, and that takes ages. Can we be smarter here?
There are several ways we could solve the problem, which I'll cover 1 by 1 because I'm not sure which is best/preferable.
1. Solve with support tickets
We change the process so that users have to apply to the program by sending in an in-app support ticket. This enables us to easily look up and confirm users are paying, and proves that they have signed up. Frees up @simfish85, but puts work on to @MarconLP
Disadvantage is that we have a marketing need to collect org_ids and emails for users in this program. We currently solve this with a Zap that exports org_ids to a spreadsheet. Would it be possible to do the same with this process, or (even better) somehow tag users on this plan so that we can easily export a cohort and track in PostHog? (@raquelmsmith)
2. Require proof
The simplest but most clunky solution would be to require users to send us proof (e.g. a screenshot of their billing page) that they are signed up and on the paid plan. This is what we do for the YC program. It puts more work onto users and opens some risk for gaming the system, but makes it a lot easier to check our end.
3. Open to other ideas here too
Ideas welcome
I'm ok with option 2 - it's minimal extra work from users for quite a lot of benefit to them?
Ah, a screenshot of the billing page isn't going to work because of the way the site displays forms. This should (according to Hubspot) display as an upload button, with help text.
Any suggestions on what else we could use, ideally just text from the app, so we can avoid asking @corywatilo and @smallbrownbike to design something new?
One alternative may be to put this into the email flow, @simfish85 ? We could include a step in the Zap that mirrors the YC process and asks for a screenshot, but that may not be any quicker for you?
How do you currently check if the user is on the paid tier? Do you log in as the user directly in PostHog? If so, we could ask for the Project ID and the Cloud region to generate a direct link to the admin page: https://us.posthog.com/admin/posthog/team/35787/change/
I'm currently checking this in Vitally - so I copy the email address from the Zapier table, search for the user in Vitally, go to the Org and then look at the Traits > Stripe tab to copy the Stripe ID (which is needed to add the credits). So quite a few clicks, whatever we can do to reduce this would be great.
I don't fully understand your question / suggestion for option one, specifically the disadvantage part. Can you explain what you'd need?
Having thought it through a bit I think the changes we need to make are:
When they submit an application we look at their submission and send them an auto-email either
- Asking them to confirm whether they are eligible if any of the data we capture (manual/clearbit) shows them as being ineligible or
- Asking them to reply confirming that they have set up a paid plan on the billing page in-app
We could also add a check to the above to see if a Stripe account exists for the submitter's email and if they qualify then we can auto-approve them without a review. The problem here is that often people will apply with a different email to that which we have on Stripe.
That doesn't sound easily achievable with a Zap, so do we need to build something custom here?
I actually think its do-able in Zapier. Wondering if I've missed an angle where something is game-able? Need to also check whether people already have credit applied when doing any auto-approvals.