Adding 11x case study #10905
Adding 11x case study #10905
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Adding a golden Keith quote about being the ten-in-one product thing
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| title: How 11x runs their entire AI company with PostHog | |||
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"AI company" is a bit broad. We should be specific here, and also clarify a benefit in the title - otherwise it just feels a bit meh.
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| # How 11x runs their entire AI company with PostHog |
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| # How 11x runs their entire AI company with PostHog |
Don't need a H1 at the start. We already have a title.
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| # How 11x runs their entire AI company with PostHog | ||
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| PostHog is the everything-platform that AI company 11x uses to run their entire operation - from engineering to product to sales. |
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Strongly disagree with this positioning, for a variety of reasons.
- "Everything platform" is already a claimed term by a variety of (often controversial) platforms. Both X/Twitter and WeChat already have this position staked.
- This is incredibly broad positioning which doesn't really communicate anything about our mission. Additionally, leading with PostHog as the hero of this story (vs 11x) robs this a little.
- "Everything-platform...to run their entire operation" feels very broad and vague. We should be specific and prove stories with tangible benefits.
The following lines paint a great picture about PostHog's adoption, but they don't work well as the starting point of the story or gel well with the following section. This would be better expressed in a quote, giving it some authenticity and enabling the story to move through with a better flow.
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Great feedback; thanks.
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| ## From basic tracking to company cockpit | ||
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| 11x builds AI digital workers that handle sales tasks like email outreach and customer calls. With hundreds of customers each training and supervising automated agents, they need powerful tools to track performance across their platform. |
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| 11x builds AI digital workers that handle sales tasks like email outreach and customer calls. With hundreds of customers each training and supervising automated agents, they need powerful tools to track performance across their platform. | |
| 11x builds AI digital workers that handle sales tasks such as email outreach and customer calls. With hundreds of customers each training and supervising automated agents, they need powerful tools to track performance across their platform. |
Like/such as: One is used for things similar to the following items, the other is used when the following items are exact examples
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| ## Session replay: "Like time travel" for engineers | ||
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| At 11x, engineers rely on [session replay](/product/session-replay) to quickly solve customer issues instead of building complex error logging systems. | ||
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| "PostHog is like time travel," says Keith. "Otherwise we are banging our heads against the wall, spending days trying to debug." | ||
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| In one case, when a customer complained about unexpected behavior, an engineer reviewed the session replay and discovered the customer had changed their own app settings and forgotten about it. | ||
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| "We hadn't even thought about this," Keith explains. "We can just rewatch. All of our engineers use it now. It saves us building out error logs. We just rely on PostHog to be our timeline activity log." | ||
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| ## Security monitoring | ||
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| Session replay even helped 11x identify and stop a security breach attempt. The team noticed 85% of their platform usage was coming from one small customer. | ||
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| "I could see they were trying to make unauthorized API calls to our platform," says Keith. "When we kicked them out, they threatened to sue us - but we were able to use our console logs to show their activity and prove they had violated our terms of service." | ||
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| (It should be noted that while Keith’s use is ingenious here, PostHog can’t legally guarantee that you, too, will be able to stop hackers at home.) | ||
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| ## Consolidating tools, saving money | ||
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| Before standardizing on PostHog, 11x was using a mix of tools: | ||
| - Custom-built feature flags | ||
| - HotJar for session recordings | ||
| - FullStory for product analytics | ||
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| "It was a hodgepodge of tools we were able to consolidate into one," Keith says. "And PostHog is the same price as each of them individually." | ||
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| ## North Star metrics on display | ||
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| Keith's favorite use case is their office dashboard display. An automation runs daily to pull North Star metrics from PostHog to TV screens in their office. | ||
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| "Every day, it's so motivating to see that go up," he says, pointing to a rising graph of customer meetings booked. "The most exciting thing is, if it's not going up, I can do something about it." |
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I like some of these sections independently and it's clear there's a lot to uncover here, but the current structure is coming across quite confused and disconnected. If we summarize each section of the whole, for example:
- PostHog is used by engineering, sales, leadership
- 11X makes digital workers and uses PostHog, but not always to it's full potential
- Engineering uses PostHog
- Security team uses PostHog
- They used to use a lot of other tools btw
- Leadership uses PostHog
- They're barely using PostHog??
- How to make a dashboard
So, it doesn't feel like it flows or tells a coherent story at all, in part due to repetition and in part due to breaks from the flow. A better story would be:
- 11x used to use a lot of tools and adopted PostHog
- Keith found they weren't using PostHog to full potential
- They now use PostHog for engineering
- And security monitoring
- And leadership
This flow cuts down on repetition, gives a more positive angle to the story as a whole, and keeps everything a lot more coherent.
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Fantastic. I've rewritten to follow this flow.
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| ## What's next for 11x and PostHog | ||
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| While 11x is getting tremendous value from PostHog, Keith feels they're "barely using it." They haven't yet implemented [surveys](//surveys) or [A/B experiments](/experiments), and only recently discovered [LLM observability](/docs/ai-engineering/observability) - particularly relevant for an AI company. |
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| While 11x is getting tremendous value from PostHog, Keith feels they're "barely using it." They haven't yet implemented [surveys](//surveys) or [A/B experiments](/experiments), and only recently discovered [LLM observability](/docs/ai-engineering/observability) - particularly relevant for an AI company. | |
| While 11x is getting tremendous value from PostHog, Keith feels they're "barely using it." They haven't yet implemented [surveys](/surveys) or [A/B experiments](/experiments), and only recently discovered [LLM observability](/docs/ai-engineering/observability) - particularly relevant for an AI company. |
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| While 11x is getting tremendous value from PostHog, Keith feels they're "barely using it." They haven't yet implemented [surveys](//surveys) or [A/B experiments](/experiments), and only recently discovered [LLM observability](/docs/ai-engineering/observability) - particularly relevant for an AI company. | ||
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| As 11x continues growing (they've relocated from London to San Francisco, raised $76 million, and now serve nearly 600 customers), PostHog remains central to their product-led approach. | ||
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| “PostHog is the ten-in-one product thing that helps us get so much done,” Keith declares. “You guys have it all.” |
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This framing seems oddly negative for the end of the article? We don't really want to get to the end of the article after explaining how three different teams all use PostHog and then have them say they're 'barely using it'.
A positive spin on this would be that they 'still see so much room to grow with PostHog', rather than foregrounding a lack of adoption.
The lack of LLM in particular just highlights a weakpoint for both us and them. If they aren't using it we should find out why and bring this knowledge into the relevant team. Even better, we should include content here about how they will start using it.
The 11x growth info should also feature at the start of the article, to help establish credibility. Getting to the end and throwing in this detail as an aside doesn't really work for the goal of a case study.
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| **More success stories from PostHog for Startups** | ||
| - [How BeforeSunset AI achieved 'Product of the Month' on Product Hunt](/spotlight/startup-before-sunset-ai) | ||
| - [How Bugprove uses influencer marketing to grow word of mouth](/spotlight/startup-bugprove) | ||
| - [How Risotto got into Y Combinator and built an AI product](/spotlight/startup-risotto) |
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| **More success stories from PostHog for Startups** | |
| - [How BeforeSunset AI achieved 'Product of the Month' on Product Hunt](/spotlight/startup-before-sunset-ai) | |
| - [How Bugprove uses influencer marketing to grow word of mouth](/spotlight/startup-bugprove) | |
| - [How Risotto got into Y Combinator and built an AI product](/spotlight/startup-risotto) |
This isn't needed here if this is a case study - and it should be in /customers rather than /spotlight
Spotlights: Stories about how teams in the startup program do things
Case studies: Stories about how teams use PostHog specifically to grow
contents/spotlight/startup-11x.md
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| ## Build your own office dashboard | ||
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| Want to create an office metrics display like 11x? Here's their setup: | ||
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| **Ingredients:** | ||
| - One Mac mini | ||
| - One external display | ||
| - One PostHog dashboard (11x uses their North Star metrics dashboard) | ||
| - A script to refresh at your preferred interval |
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This is a nice idea, but it's functionally useless unless we have more detail on that script and how it works. Otherwise it's just "Get a computer and set up a dashboard, so you can see the dashboard on the computer"
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@ivanagas could be a nice tutorial though?
Rewriting for better flow and story, incorporating Joe's feedback
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@joethreepwood Great feedback all around; thanks for the close attention. I've changed the file with a re-written version that incorporates your notes. |
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@joethreepwood do you want to take this over or close it? |
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Leave it open for now. I'm still chasing customer approval. |
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Actually, close this, I need to rewrite it completely tbh |
I met with Keith from 11x to learn about their setup, and write a story about their usage of PostHog. Here is the first draft.
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