< Workshops
August 26, 2026
08:00 am PT | 10:00 am CT | 11:00 am ET
$45,000 a month for weird ideas: how PostHog does marketing
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PostHog ranks for “feet pics,” sells action figures of its CEO, wrote its data processing agreement as a fairy tale, and built a physical toy for developers. None of this came from a campaign brief.
In this Wynter Workshop, Joe Martin, Marketing Lead and Worst Engineer at PostHog, explained the system behind the ideas. The useful lesson is not that every company should copy the stunts. It is that unusual marketing needs permission, ownership, taste, and room to fail.
PostHog started as a small company facing much larger competitors. Looking like the rest of the developer tools category would have made it easy to ignore.
The team saw the problem differently. It was not only competing against analytics products. It was competing with everything people could look at online, including cat videos. The marketing had to be interesting enough to earn attention.
That thinking became “Do More Weird.” PostHog would rather be remembered for something unusual than disappear behind safe B2B marketing.
Anyone at PostHog can submit an idea in the company’s Do More Weird Slack channel. The company reserves $45,000 each month to fund selected projects. Its total monthly marketing budget is roughly $1.2 million.
The team does not need to spend the full amount. The budget tells employees that unusual ideas are legitimate work. Many suggestions cost almost nothing. The dedicated money becomes useful when a small idea grows into a serious project.
As the company grew, it created the Council of Weird. An executive and the head of graphics and design review the larger proposals each month and select several for funding. Small experiments can still happen without formal approval.
A channel full of clever suggestions can easily become performative. People post jokes, wait for marketing to pick them up, and nothing ships.
PostHog expects the person with the idea to drive it. The suggestion is not a request for the marketing team. Someone must care enough to build it, launch it, or find the people who can.
This keeps the original character of the idea intact. It also filters out concepts that are fun to discuss but not worth doing.
DeskHog started with a question: what if PostHog made a Tamagotchi? The idea grew into a small developer toy built with a microcomputer and a 3D printed case.
The team wrote software for it, made about a thousand units, and spent roughly a month bringing it to market. It was treated like a real product, not a disposable promotional item.
DeskHog reached the front page of Hacker News and sold out in about an hour. It was not a major source of profit. Its value came from giving developers something they wanted to own and talk about.
PostHog measures individual projects when the measurement is useful. DeskHog had sales, traffic sources, and customer activity. Other ideas have no realistic path to direct revenue.
The team once bid thousands of dollars for a costume connected to the internal name of an engineering system. Joe has pushed for an art exhibition and a fine arts scholarship. These ideas support the company’s culture and values even if they never create pipeline.
Data informs the decision, but it does not replace judgment. If a dashboard says a project performed well while customers and the team believe the work was bad, PostHog may still choose not to repeat it.
PostHog tries to limit unnecessary collaboration. Fewer approval rounds mean less time spent creating an idea that James, Tim, Charles, and everyone else can tolerate.
Joe used the company’s San Francisco billboards as an example. Some employees did not understand or like the legal advertising inspired concept about oversized AI bills. Their approval was not required. The billboards shipped and performed well.
Strong creative work does not need a unanimous vote. It needs a person with judgment who will accept responsibility for the result.
This model depends on who joins the company. PostHog asks candidates for a hot take and for an idea they wanted to try elsewhere but could never get approved.
Some of its most influential hires did not come from standard B2B SaaS backgrounds. Former journalists shaped the company’s editorial approach. A designer with a fine arts background helped define the hedgehog illustrations and visual identity.
PostHog also looks for people who execute. A product marketer cannot stop at making a deck and handing it to another team. The person who creates the plan should help ship the work.
Joe’s most memorable failure was one of PostHog’s first community events. The company spent about $10,000 and six weeks organizing a fireside chat. It booked a polished venue, invited an important customer, ordered cocktails and pizza, and produced merchandise.
Six people attended. Two were Joe’s friends.
The company ran a postmortem and moved on. It did not treat one expensive miss as evidence that Joe should stop taking risks. PostHog later became much better at events because the team could study the failure without turning it into a career ending mistake.
An internal Slack channel called “mistakes were made” reinforces that behavior. Employees who make a serious error join colleagues who have also made mistakes and kept the company’s trust. The point is to acknowledge the problem, learn, and continue working.
Developers spend a lot of time online and see a lot of marketing. They are not immune to it. They are quick to reject work that is generic, patronizing, or boring.
PostHog has seen developers respond to thoughtful onboarding emails, good subject lines, useful writing, and distinctive design. The audience was never the problem. The quality of the marketing was.
For companies selling to developers, a small departure from the standard B2B playbook can feel significant because the standard is so repetitive.
PostHog does not take creative risks because it already has a distinctive brand. The brand became distinctive because the company kept taking those risks.
Its early website was a conventional dark purple SaaS site. The current identity came through years of iteration, investment in illustration, strong writing, and trust in a design team willing to produce something opinionated.
The same applies to transparency. PostHog publishes its marketing budget, strategy, goals, and internal handbook. At many companies, putting the marketing budget online would be stranger and more valuable than an expensive stunt.
Many PostHog ideas cost little or nothing. The workshop included examples such as a $9,999 delivery option where the CEO personally brings an order anywhere in the world, a coin flip that could adjust a customer’s bill, small LEGO kits, and a Fallout inspired wrist computer connected to PostHog analytics.
The first experiment at a conventional company can be one strong design decision, a product easter egg, a transparent document, or a small idea someone genuinely wants to own.
