The co-founder and co-CEO who built PostHog - the open-source analytics tool engineers refuse to quit - by being louder, weirder, and more transparent than every B2B company around him.
Most analytics companies want you to forget they exist. James Hawkins built one with a hedgehog mascot, a public handbook, and a co-CEO he refuses to hold a single one-on-one with.
PostHog is the open-source product analytics platform that engineers actually install themselves - no procurement deck, no sales call, just a tool dropped into a codebase and a dashboard that lights up. Today it sits at a $1.4 billion valuation after a $75M Series E in September 2025. Hawkins runs it alongside Tim Glaser, his co-founder, in a two-person CEO arrangement most boards would find alarming and the two of them find efficient.
The thing worth knowing about Hawkins is that he didn't arrive from engineering. He calls himself a former "very bad developer" and spent his early career in marketing - building and running a new department at c2o Media, where he grew a team from one person to fifty inside a single year and turned it profitable from the first month of sales. He studied Economics at Cambridge. He understood demand before he understood deploys, and that order of operations shaped everything PostHog became.
PostHog was born inside Y Combinator's W20 batch, and it was not the plan. Hawkins and Glaser pivoted five times before it. They struggled to get even ten companies to use earlier products. With roughly four weeks left before Demo Day, they stopped trying to sell to non-technical buyers and built a tool for the people who'd actually use it - developers. They shipped it as open source, posted it on Hacker News, and watched the deployments climb past 300 within days.
It would be easier to build a hypersonic plane than accounting software.— James Hawkins, on why bold ideas rally people
The bet underneath the pivot came from watching hypergrowth companies - Facebook, Netflix, Pinterest - and noticing they shared a cultural trait: engineers sat close to user data and had the autonomy to act on it. PostHog's product is that observation turned into software. Give the people who build things the numbers, and stop routing every insight through a committee.
PostHog's growth story has a punchline that sounds invented. The company's $70M Series D, led by Stripe, traced back to a single tweet. It is the kind of outcome that only happens when a founder has spent years being loud in public - posting numbers, posting opinions, posting the occasional shitpost - until the audience is large enough that one message moves money. Hawkins treats distribution as a craft, not an afterthought.
And he treats the brand the same way. The PostHog hedgehog - the logo, the "hog" puns, the off-kilter voice - was a line drawing he sketched at 2am before launch, inspired by Go's gopher mascot. He kept it because it was informal, and informality, in a category of beige enterprise dashboards, is a competitive advantage. "It's the final 20% that brings the brand benefit," he's said. Most companies stop at 80%. He doesn't.
The operating model is as unusual as the brand. PostHog puts almost everything it can into the open - strategy, handbook, pricing logic, internal thinking. Hawkins runs a pre-mortem on his own decisions by imagining each one landing on Hacker News and bracing for the comments. He organizes the company into small autonomous teams with - by design - no meetings between them. He banned internal one-on-ones with his co-CEO so the two could stay pointed at zero-to-one work instead of status updates.
He's also willing to kill his own revenue when the math is honest. PostHog discontinued the monetized self-hosted tier after it generated 70% of support tickets while contributing only 10% of revenue. The clever-sounding move was to keep it. The focused move was to cut it. "If it's complicated and clever sounding," he says, "you're not focused enough."
Hawkins's ambition runs past analytics. The long-term vision is software that doesn't just surface a problem but suggests the fix - and that hands the same data-driven autonomy engineers enjoy to support, sales, and marketing teams who've never had it. "Data will tell you a problem," he's careful to add. "It's not going to tell you what the answer is." The tool points; the human decides. He wants to build that for a long time, and his stated edge isn't genius - it's stamina. "One of the most basic things that's not spoken about much is just not giving up."
Bars indicate relative scale across rounds, not a single shared axis. Figures from public reporting.
If it's complicated and clever sounding, you're not focused enough.
Data will tell you a problem. It's not going to tell you what the answer is.
It would be easier to build a hypersonic plane than accounting software.
It's the final 20% that brings the brand benefit.
One of the most basic things that's not spoken about much is just not giving up.
We put almost everything we can into the public.
He sketched PostHog's mascot as a quick line drawing the night before launch, lifting the idea from Go's gopher. He kept it because it looked informal - which is exactly why it works in a category of beige dashboards.
The Stripe-led Series D came out of a single tweet. Years of posting in public compounded into a round most founders chase through a hundred meetings.
In the early days, he and Glaser worked from 9am until midnight-to-3am, seven days a week, with breaks rationed to a ten-minute sandwich walk and one episode of Parks and Recreation.
Before making a call, he imagines it posted to Hacker News and braces for the comments. If the imaginary thread would tear it apart, he reconsiders.
He cut PostHog's paid self-hosted tier when it produced 70% of support tickets for 10% of revenue. The clever move was to keep it. He chose focus.
PostHog runs as small autonomous teams with no scheduled meetings between them - and the two co-CEOs banned their own one-on-ones to stay on zero-to-one work.
JAMES HAWKINS · BUILT IN PUBLIC