Beginner → Intermediate · ~6 hours
Measure, Keep, and Grow
A start-to-finish growth program for teams on PostHog. Measure what's actually happening, keep the users you already have, then drive traffic into an audience you own — and run it on a 30/60/90/180-day plan. Written for technical founders and the consultants who set this up for them.
One-time purchase · Lifetime access · Or every course with All-Access — $99
The syllabus, quizzes, and workbook are the real course — read the first two chapters free →
Mostteamsgrowbypouringmoretrafficintoaleakybucket.Thiscourseteachestheoppositeorder:fixretentionfirst,thenacquisition—becauseeveryimprovementtoretentioncompounds,andeverydollaroftrafficworksharder.Most teams grow by pouring more traffic into a leaky bucket. This course teaches the opposite order: fix retention first, then acquisition — because every improvement to retention compounds, and every dollar of traffic works harder.
Why retention comes first
Retention improvements compound; traffic buys don't. The course opens by making you run that math on your own numbers.
more profit from a 5% lift in retention
Bain & Companythe engagement of behaviour-triggered email vs. batch sends
Epsilonwhat acquiring a new customer costs vs. keeping one — a range the course teaches you to treat as direction, not decimals
Harvard Business Review“I can see clear value in here. There is a ton of content — I'm quite shocked that it's so free. The first two chapters were amazing.”
Three readers, one operating model
The course teaches one system. What you take from it depends on the seat you're sitting in.
For technical founders
Growth as a hat, not a hire
You can already ship. This adds the operating model: instrument PostHog so you can see what's actually happening, fix retention before buying traffic, and run the whole thing on a plan that survives busy weeks.
You leave with
- Your own numbers in every calculator — payback, compounding retention, paid readiness
- The lifecycle playbook: which emails to send, in what order, built in code
- A 30/60/90/180-day plan assembled from your own answers
For consultants
A playbook you can charge for
The chapter order is the setup order for a client engagement: measurement first, retention second, acquisition last. Every stage produces an artefact a client can hold.
You leave with
- A repeatable setup sequence — event taxonomy, the daily dashboard, lifecycle sends
- Deliverables that justify the retainer: the dashboard, the experiment doc, the staged plan
- The arguments, with sources, for why retention work comes before ad spend
For people breaking into growth
The vocabulary and the reasoning
Every term is defined the moment it appears — acronyms expanded, jargon cashed out into things you can measure. You learn why each tactic works, not just what it's called.
You leave with
- Working fluency: AARRR, CAC, LTV, cohorts, holdouts — each defined, then used
- A workbook and plan you can show — evidence you can do the work, not just discuss it
- A chapter on talking about growth credibly, and one on what the skill is worth to you
15 chapters in 5 parts
Ordered the way the work runs: measure, keep, grow — then run it. The two free chapters are marked.
Measure
Instrument PostHog from zero, build the one dashboard you check every day, and run experiments that settle arguments.
- 01Start here — Becoming a product-led growth teamWhat product-led growth actually means, why it's an operating model any startup can adopt, the evidence it works, the five ways teams get it wrong, and the map of the system the rest of this course builds — in nine short pieces.Free
9 lessons
- ·The shift this course is aboutFree
- ·What "product-led growth" meansFree
- ·Product-led as an operating modelFree
- ·Growth is an engineering disciplineFree
- ·Who owns growth on a small teamFree
- ·The machine you're going to buildFree
- ·How teams get this wrongFree
- ·The one rule: measure → keep → growFree
- ·Before you move onFree
- 02Stages of growth: what to care about whenWhy 'what to care about' changes as you grow, the five stages from idea to scale, the one question and the one metric that matter at each, the traps that come from running a later company's playbook too early, and the metrics that quietly lie at every stage — in eight short pieces.
- 031 — What PostHog is, and why you want itThe tool you'll measure with, why measuring is the first job of a growth team, how event-based analytics differs from GA4, what else is on the market, and what it really costs — in ten short pieces.Free
10 lessons
- ·Why measure at allFree
- ·One pipeline, one identityFree
- ·The whole PostHog suiteFree
- ·The two demos to actually watchFree
- ·Events, persons, and why it isn't GA4Free
- ·PostHog Workflows vs HogsendFree
- ·US cloud or EU cloudFree
- ·What PostHog costsFree
- ·Why PostHog vs the alternativesFree
- ·Set up your accountFree
- 042 — AARRR and the leaky bucketThe five numbers that matter, the order to fix them in, the one metric that predicts whether a user stays, how to find yours, and the other frameworks worth knowing — in six short pieces.
- 053 — Instrument PostHog from zeroInstall the SDK, identify your users, capture the events that matter, write a tracking plan your team shares, make your setup experiment-ready, and make sure ad blockers can't blind you — in ten short pieces.
10 lessons
- ·Ways to install PostHog
- ·Autocapture: what you get for free
- ·Custom events: the signal you add yourself
- ·Identifying users (and the cost lever inside it)
- ·The events to track first
- ·Other ways to get events in
- ·Beating ad blockers
- ·Actions, and why clean events unlock experiments
- ·Keep it clean
- ·Before you move on
- 064 — What to look at every dayThe handful of charts a founder should read each morning, what each one is telling you, how to read a retention curve properly, how to use session replay as the 'why' behind the numbers, and how to stop logging in to check any of it — in eight short pieces.
- 07Running experiments wellWhen to test and when to just ship, the hypothesis format that forces clarity, primary metrics and guardrails, power and sample size, holdouts and incrementality, reading results honestly, and the weekly tempo that makes learning compound — in eight short pieces.
Keep
Which lifecycle emails to send, in what order — and the playbook for building the whole sequence.
- 085 — Lifecycle messaging: which emails, in what orderThe messaging program that plugs the leaky bucket — which journeys to build first, why behavioural beats batch, deliverability, the tools you could use, and how to prove any of it works with holdouts — in twelve short pieces.
12 lessons
- ·Lifecycle messaging plugs the bucket
- ·The stages, mapped to AARRR
- ·The order to build them — and why
- ·Triggered beats batch-and-blast
- ·Why touch-points matter (and how many)
- ·Deliverability: none of this works if you don't land
- ·Personalise on behaviour, not just name
- ·Multi-channel: email is the workhorse, not the only horse
- ·The tools you could use (and when no-code is right)
- ·Prove it works: holdouts
- ·Which journeys first, for your kind of startup
- ·Before you move on
- 096 — Your lifecycle playbookThe concrete emails behind the lifecycle strategy — welcome, activation nudge, conversion, win-back, dunning, referral, feedback — what each one is, why you need it, the tactics that make it land, and how they come together into a system that helps rather than spams, in fifteen short pieces.
15 lessons
- ·The lifecycle loop
- ·Anatomy of a lifecycle message
- ·What makes a good lifecycle email
- ·Welcome + onboarding (Activation)
- ·A behavioural nudge series (Activation)
- ·Free to paid (Conversion)
- ·Win-back (Reactivation)
- ·Dunning (Revenue / Churn prevention)
- ·Referral (Referral)
- ·Asking for feedback (Feedback)
- ·Reliability: the system has to be trustworthy
- ·Build vs buy
- ·Feeding your journeys and proving lift
- ·How they come together
- ·Before you move on
Grow
Drive traffic that compounds, and capture every visitor into an audience you own instead of rent.
- 107 — Driving trafficOnce the bucket holds water, it's time to open the tap: how to choose the channel that actually fits your product, the CAC and payback maths that tell you whether it's working, how Meta ads work if paid is your channel, and how to keep conversion tracking honest despite ad blockers and iOS — in ten short pieces.
10 lessons
- ·Where are you starting from?
- ·The channel menu — and how to choose
- ·The maths that decides: CAC, LTV, payback
- ·The shape of a Meta campaign
- ·The three audiences
- ·Your conversion tracking is lying to you
- ·The fix: Pixel and Conversions API
- ·Feeding it from PostHog (and Hogsend)
- ·Consent — the part that isn't optional
- ·Before you move on
- 118 — The owned-audience flywheelHow ad clicks and visitors become verified emails and linked Discord/Telegram accounts — an audience you own, can reach for free, and can build a referral loop on. Plus what it takes to run the community itself, and the tools you'd otherwise rent — in ten short pieces.
Run
Assemble the whole system, learn to talk about growth credibly, and leave with a staged 30/60/90/180-day plan.
- 129 — Putting it all togetherThe whole machine on one page, the operating cadence that keeps it running, the experimentation program that makes it compound, and what it means to have become a growth team — in eight short pieces.
- 13Talking about growth (and how not to)Who cares about which number, the two-number story that persuades, the two reporting cadences, explaining a holdout to a skeptic, presenting a loss, spotting vanity metrics and growth theatre, and assembling the one report the course points at — in nine short pieces.
- 1410 — Your 30/60/90/180-day planThe whole course as a sequenced operating plan: what to build in each phase, the exit criteria that gate the next one, the zero-to-one and by-stage variants, the operating templates that run it, and where it goes after day 180 — in fourteen short pieces.
14 lessons
- ·How to use this plan
- ·Which version of the plan are you on?
- ·Who's running this — and how the plan bends to fit
- ·The zero-to-one version (if you have no users yet)
- ·Day 0 — commit (one hour, no code)
- ·Days 1–30 — Measure
- ·Days 31–60 — Keep
- ·Days 61–90 — Grow
- ·Days 91–180 — Compound
- ·The weekly growth review (your operating ritual)
- ·The experiment doc (a template you can reuse)
- ·What good looks like at each gate
- ·After 180 days — the next horizon
- ·Before you move on
Career
What running growth well is worth to you — the case for growth as career capital.
Built to be worked, not watched
Every element below is in the course today, and everything interactive saves to your account as you go.
Quizzes you can't memorise
Every chapter ends with one, and each run samples five questions from a bigger pool — so a retake is a fresh test of the ideas, not of your memory.
Flashcards for the ideas worth keeping
One deck per chapter, written as full answers in the course voice rather than keyword prompts — for spaced review long after you finish reading.
Calculators that run on your numbers
Retention compounding, CAC/LTV payback, paid readiness, dunning recovery, viral K-factor, ICE scoring, PMF-40, activation value — each takes your inputs and saves its read-out to your workbook.
Watch the video, or read its digest
Every embedded talk and podcast carries a transcript and a what-to-take-from-it summary — press play when it's worth the minutes, keep moving when it isn't.
Answers you commit to in writing
Check-ins profile your stage and stack as you read; writing prompts make you put decisions into words. Both persist to your workbook.
The deeper end, verified
Reading lists with the books and essays behind the arguments — quoted and checked against the source — for any chapter you want more of.
Your answers become your plan
Everything you type — calculator inputs, checklist ticks, written answers — lands on one page on your account, editable in place. You finish with your numbers and your plan, not a pile of highlights.
- calculator read-outs
- 11
- checklists
- 17
- writing prompts
- 30
- profiling check-ins
- 20
- quiz scores
- 16
- flashcard decks
- 18
- videos & podcasts
- 47
- reading lists
- 4
All of it on one page, for as long as you want it.
Leave with a plan for days 0–180
The plan chapter assembles your workbook answers into a staged checklist: five day-0 commitments, then a short list each for days 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 91–180. A weekly-review ritual and an experiment doc keep it running past the last page.
One payment, yours forever
No subscription. Promo codes are accepted at checkout, and checkout issues an invoice you can expense.
Measure, Keep, and Grow on your account, forever.
Features
- All 15 chapters, every quiz, calculator, and deck
- The full workbook, saved to your account
- Two full chapters free before you pay
- Lifetime access and all future updates
Every course, now and later, unlocked on your account for one payment.
Features
- Every course on the site today
- Every future course, unlocked automatically
- Lifetime access, one payment
No refunds — the first two chapters are free in full so you can judge the course before paying.
Gift this course to someone — $49
Know someone on your team who should work through this? You pay for one copy and we mint a single-use unlock code — emailed straight to them if you give us their address, or to you to forward.
Buy for your team — $49 per seat
One checkout, one invoice. We mint a single-use unlock code per seat and email you the batch to hand out — each code's redemption status shows on your account page.
2–25 seats per pack. Codes are single-use and never expire.
Get this course for free
Most teams have a learning budget that goes unused. We've written the email — edit the brackets and send it.
Hi [manager name],
I'd like to expense a course: "Measure, Keep, and Grow" — a start-to-finish
growth program for teams on PostHog. It's $49, one-time.
Why it's relevant to us:
- It covers instrumenting PostHog properly — an event taxonomy, a
daily dashboard, experiments — which applies directly to our stack.
- The middle of the course is retention and lifecycle email, end to
end: which messages to send, in what order, and how to build the
sequence.
- It finishes with a 30/60/90/180-day plan assembled from our own
numbers, so there's a concrete artefact at the end of it.
You can judge it before approving anything — the first two chapters
are free in full, no account needed:
https://course.hogsend.com/growth-with-posthog
It's a one-time purchase with lifetime access (no subscription), and
checkout issues a proper invoice. If it turns out to be useful, extra
copies for the team can be bought as single-use unlock codes.
Thanks,
[your name]Buying for several people? Get a team pack — one invoice, one unlock code per seat. For anything bigger, write to doug@withseismic.com.
Common questions
The short version: $49 once, lifetime access, and the first two chapters free to judge it by.
Technical founders running their own growth, and the consultants who set it up for clients. It assumes you can read a dashboard and aren't scared of a code block — as growth material it runs beginner to intermediate.
Start with the free chapters
The first two chapters are free in full, no account needed. If they don't change how you look at your funnel, the rest isn't for you.