
Our experience moving to SF to do YC - james_impliu
https://posthog.com/blog/moving-to-sf/
======
gavinray
Really cool to see you guys talking about your journey, hope to see you
succeed.

I caught Posthog a bit early as it was trending on Git, and sent the repo link
out to a few startup + dev groupchats on WhatsApp because I think it
complements Metabase incredibly well. The combination of PostHog + Metabase
lets you stand up a really powerful free BI and product analytics stack in a
few seconds, and these are two areas I see so many early-stage startups
faltering on. Not collecting product and usage/user data and using it to gain
actionable insights.

Excited to continue following along from the sidelines to see what the future
holds for you.

~~~
james_impliu
Thanks - it's really nice to see the community sharing it!

To your point on "in a few seconds"... We're currently trying to build out
more libraries as fast as we can so people working on apps in lots of
languages can easily integrate it - we've done Python, Ruby, NodeJS, JS, Go
and PHP, and an API for the rest. Feature requests for new libraries as issues
in the repo
([https://github.com/posthog/posthog](https://github.com/posthog/posthog))
very welcome.

~~~
gavinray
The Docker bit (which seems an obvious choice) is what makes it cake.

I just run a few bash commands and deploy PostHog + Metabase for friends on
Cloud Run, since it's practically free (2,000,000 requests/mo) and has no
operational burden. God bless Serverless Containers & Cloud Run.

Throwing up an open source containerized BI, analytics, and
observability/monitoring stack is usually the first thing I do for companies.
It's super easy and delivers a ton of value. PostHog fits really well there.

~~~
wdb
What would you use for "observability/monitoring stack"?

------
francescow
Amazing article! It sounds like you guys made the right choice to move to SF.
Thank you so much for the super kind words about Kyte! The whole Kyte team
much appreciated this and we are looking forward to delivering many more cars
to your door in the future! :) The best of luck for PostHog!!!

~~~
mav3rick
I see the pricing is per day. Have you thought of hourly pricing ?

------
est31
I wonder how you'd solve the visas in a situation like this. It seems to me
the only way to found a company in the US is either via a O1 visum, a
greencard, or a citizenship, all of which are rather hard to obtain, harder
than the alternatives where you join an existing company. There is no big tech
with on-campus immigration offices sponsoring you.

~~~
james_impliu
It's really tough - we had to get professional advice.

YC connected us with an immigration attorney the moment we got accepted and he
helped greatly to make sure we approached this in the right way. It would have
been a maze to do this without him. It's still not easy and it's a lot of
extra stress.

Certain countries like the UK have ESTAs for up to 90 days, but the program is
3 months + then you generally will want to be here to raise afterwards, so you
should get some advice on how to do this specific to your home country.

Even the VISAs are painful - for example, an O1 (even if you do manage to get
it) means IIRC your spouse can't work even if you can.

~~~
est31
Thanks for the answer. What did you end up doing in your specific instances?

~~~
throw3924309
I'm interested in this as well.

------
eternalny1
> I used to run sales teams, my job was to try to give a realistic figure for
> how much our revenue would increase. Any experienced VP Sales will play down
> the number – most would prefer hitting a $20M target, over missing a $22M
> number by $1M and ending up at a higher number. That’s how you optimize for
> not getting fired.

8 bosses, Bob!

Good write-up.

~~~
james_impliu
Thanks :) I actually find this a really interesting topic. This approach can
have some merit - ie it leads to you not overspending and running out of money
if you are reliant on new business targets being hit. However, the ideal
situation is that your CFO manages the spending conservatively whilst the VP
Sales goes out and pushes things as far as they can. There are some morale
issues too with giving very high targets when you are a managing a team who
are judged against those - for fast growth, you want to give people a sense of
accomplishment (so constantly undershooting huge targets is a quick way to
prevent that) but also for them to push the boundary of what is possible.

------
veeralpatel979
Great post!

I went ahead and read all your posts in the series:

[https://posthog.com/blog/before-the-yc-
application/](https://posthog.com/blog/before-the-yc-application/)

[https://posthog.com/blog/the-yc-interview/](https://posthog.com/blog/the-yc-
interview/)

[https://posthog.com/blog/moving-to-sf/](https://posthog.com/blog/moving-to-
sf/)

[https://posthog.com/blog/pivot-to-posthog/](https://posthog.com/blog/pivot-
to-posthog/)

[https://posthog.com/blog/after-the-hn-
launch/](https://posthog.com/blog/after-the-hn-launch/)

I'd recommend them to anyone who liked the linked post.

------
sbilstein
omg finally a positive post on moving to San Francisco! Sure it has it's
problems but the Bay Area is truly lovely in so many ways.

------
tschwimmer
This was a really refreshing take on this type of blog post. It came across as
genuine and humble. I wish you folks the best of luck on PostHog!

------
thedance
Cutting yourself off from civil society so you can totally dedicate yourself
to enriching the VC class doesn't seem positive to me. In fact it seems like
this is how we keep getting so much software (and hardware!) that solves no
actual human need of any kind.

------
notlukesky
Did I miss it but where did they move from? A comparison of before and after
would have been great.

~~~
robbrown451
They do mention London down in the article, but I already knew UK because of
the spelling of sceptical and the use of "hired" where Americans would say
"rented."

Nice to see an article where they aren't slamming on my city, btw. :) Although
I question the "rarely windy" comment.

~~~
james_impliu
Ha! It is way harder than you'd think to write in US English.

~~~
robbrown451
No need, the Britishisms add character.

~~~
james_impliu
It's also definitely less windy than you think it is.

~~~
robbrown451
Not sure how long you've been here, but summers are the worst for cold.
Average high temperature in July is significantly lower than that of Alberta
Canada. And yeah, wind. The hotter it is in the central valley of California,
the colder and windier it gets in SF.

Glad you are enjoying it here though.

------
catchmeifyoucan
I love the logo - it adds a nice sense of playfulness.

------
ultimoo
Nice read! Call me jaded but _walking_ up to twin peaks in the dark? Be
careful!

~~~
chrisseaton
Why not walking?

~~~
refurb
Lots of crime, someone was shot there not long ago.

------
pw
This mentions their first group office hours. Does YC now do group office
hours instead of individual? If they do, I'd hadn't heard about it, and it
seems like it could be an important innovation.

~~~
james_impliu
There's a mix, so you can request 1:1 office hours whenever you want to speak
to a particular partner. The onus is on you to drive the agenda in these. We
tend to use them to talk through what we're doing next. ie after our HN launch
we wanted to discuss "we have some momentum, what should we do next".
Basically, whenever we've too many ideas and need help being more focussed.

The group ones are a once every two weeks thing. The reason they're cool is
that you hear about others raising issues you wouldn't have thought to raise
yourself.

------
dirtydroog
What 'YC' is wasn't explained by the end of the first two paragraphs so I
stopped reading.

~~~
redis_mlc
> so I stopped reading

dirtydroog, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need a lot more persistence
than that. Not only is "YC" well-known, and the operator of this site, but
it's the first result in google when you search for "YC" or "what is YC".

Not trying to insult you, but you need to raise your game several levels.

The whole "stopped reading" meme needs to die. Generally it indicates a
problem with the reader, not the author.

~~~
dirtydroog
Why. Why should I have to google it?

