The machine you're going to build
The whole system on one page: three layers, one loop. See it (PostHog), act on it (Hogsend), own it (identity + ads) — and the division of labour that keeps it legible: PostHog detects, Hogsend acts, you decide.
In this chapter's workbook
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Here's the whole system on one page, so the chapters that follow have somewhere to hang. Three layers, one loop:
- See it — PostHog. Collect events, identify people, and read the funnel, retention, and the daily dashboard. You can't fix a leak you can't see.
- Act on it — Hogsend. Code-first lifecycle journeys that reach the right user at the right moment — welcome, nudge, win-back, dunning (recovering failed payments), referral — triggered by the same events you measure, and fired back as events so the loop stays measurable.
- Own it — identity + ads. Drive traffic, then capture every visitor into a channel you own (verified email, linked Discord/Telegram) on an identity graph, so you never pay to reach the same person twice — and so your ads and referrals compound.
The division of labour that keeps it simple no matter how much you add: PostHog detects, Hogsend acts, you decide. Hold that split and the system stays legible.
| Layer | Tool | Chapters | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decide what matters | You (AARRR, North Star) | 0, 2 | What are we even optimising? |
| See it | PostHog | 1, 3, 4 | Where are we losing people? |
| Act on it | Hogsend | 5, 6 | How do we pull them back, automatically? |
| Own & grow it | Ads + Hogsend connectors | 7, 8 | How do we acquire without renting our audience? |
| Run it | The cadence + the plan | 9, 10 | How does this become a habit, not a project? |
Two chapters at the end turn the machine into an operation: the cadence chapter is the rhythm it runs on (the daily/weekly/monthly cadence and the experimentation program), and the plan chapter is the 30/60/90/180-day plan — the whole build sequenced into phases with interactive checklists, exit criteria, and the anti-patterns per phase. If you're the kind of person who wants to see the plan before the theory, it's there; it will just keep pointing you back here.
Quiz
Quick check — the machine
4 questions, instant feedback.
Before you move on
This chapter's workbook items — sign in free and they save as you go:
Who owns growth on a small team
Not "hire a growth lead." Assign the hat, make the ritual cheap, and give the whole team the shared language — then climb the maturity ladder from flying blind to compounding through an owned audience.
How teams get this wrong
Five failure modes, each a way of not being a growth team: the vibes startup, the dashboard graveyard, the blast list, the rented-audience trap, and the subtle one — the tactic collector.