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Remove consensus behaviour from new products#16662

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timgl-patch-19
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Remove consensus behaviour from new products#16662
timgl wants to merge 1 commit intomasterfrom
timgl-patch-19

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@timgl
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@timgl timgl commented Apr 29, 2026

Changes

As we get more blitzscale team members, there's a higher change that we end up only building new products everyone agrees is a good idea. That's a sure-fire way of making sure we never take big bets. Update guidance to say only one blitzscale team member has to think a new product is a good idea for us to invest in it.

Also update some of the guidance on what new products are a good idea, like building products for the future not the past.

Checklist

  • I've read the docs and/or content style guides.
  • Words are spelled using American English
  • Use relative URLs for internal links
  • I've checked the pages added or changed in the Vercel preview build
  • If I moved a page, I added a redirect in vercel.json

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github-actions Bot commented Apr 29, 2026

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Status Details Updated (UTC)
🟢 Ready View preview Apr 29, 2026 10:26PM

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Vale prose linter → found 6 errors, 14 warnings, 0 suggestions in your markdown

Full report → Copy the linter results into an LLM to batch-fix issues.

Linter being weird? Update the rules!

contents/handbook/which-products.md — 6 errors, 14 warnings, 0 suggestions
Line Severity Message Rule
16:11 warning Capitalize 'Error Tracking' for PostHog's product. Use 'error tracking' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
16:29 warning Capitalize 'Feature Flags' for PostHog's product. Use 'feature flags' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
34:15 warning 'Blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling
36:373 warning 'Blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling
38:241 warning 'blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling
38:312 warning 'blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling
38:346 warning 'blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling
46:11 error Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. PostHogBase.EnDash
47:6 error Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. PostHogBase.EnDash
48:18 error Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. PostHogBase.EnDash
50:5 warning Capitalize 'Revenue Analytics' for PostHog's product. Use 'Revenue analytics' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
50:39 warning Capitalize 'Customer Analytics' for PostHog's product. Use 'customer analytics' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
54:18 error Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. PostHogBase.EnDash
57:54 warning Capitalize 'Data Warehouse' for PostHog's product. Use 'data warehouse' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
63:111 warning Capitalize 'Product Analytics' for PostHog's product. Use 'product analytics' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
65:224 warning Capitalize 'Data Warehouse' for PostHog's product. Use 'data warehouse' for the general industry concept. PostHogBase.ProductNames
65:364 error Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. PostHogBase.EnDash
69:3 warning 'unpeel' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling
69:21 error Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. PostHogBase.EnDash
69:242 warning 'Annika' is a possible misspelling. PostHogBase.Spelling

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seems exciting 👀


Other times you might have an idea for a great product we should build. In that case, use the <PrivateLink url="https://github.com/PostHog/requests-for-comments-internal/blob/main/_TEMPLATES/request-for-comments-new-product.md">New Product RFC template</PrivateLink>. You might choose to hack together a prototype of the product to demo and show off, which you should do! Blitzscale only needs to get involved if you want to start working on this product full time. At that point, we are choosing whether to invest a pretty serious amount of money into launching it, so we want to get that right.

The best products are often ones that not everyone thinks is a good idea before launch. For example, Tim was against building Session Replay, and it's probably the thing PostHog is most known for today. To make sure we take big bets, _any_ blitzscale team member can OK a new product being built, even if other blitzscale members disagree. That blitzscale person will be the one who the new team reports to. This way we avoid consensus stopping us from making big bets.
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s/thinks is a good/thinks are a good/


Other times you might have an idea for a great product we should build. In that case, use the <PrivateLink url="https://github.com/PostHog/requests-for-comments-internal/blob/main/_TEMPLATES/request-for-comments-new-product.md">New Product RFC template</PrivateLink>. You might choose to hack together a prototype of the product to demo and show off, which you should do! Blitzscale only needs to get involved if you want to start working on this product full time. At that point, we are choosing whether to invest a pretty serious amount of money into launching it, so we want to get that right.

The best products are often ones that not everyone thinks is a good idea before launch. For example, Tim was against building Session Replay, and it's probably the thing PostHog is most known for today. To make sure we take big bets, _any_ blitzscale team member can OK a new product being built, even if other blitzscale members disagree. That blitzscale person will be the one who the new team reports to. This way we avoid consensus stopping us from making big bets.
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Suggested change
The best products are often ones that not everyone thinks is a good idea before launch. For example, Tim was against building Session Replay, and it's probably the thing PostHog is most known for today. To make sure we take big bets, _any_ blitzscale team member can OK a new product being built, even if other blitzscale members disagree. That blitzscale person will be the one who the new team reports to. This way we avoid consensus stopping us from making big bets.
The best products are often ones that not everyone thinks is a good idea before launch. For example, Tim was against building Session Replay, and it's one of our most popular products. To make sure we take big bets, _any_ Blitzscale team member can OK a new product being built, even if other Blitzscale members disagree. That Blitzscale person will be the one who the new team reports to. This way we avoid consensus stopping us from making big bets.

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(judging by #brand-mentions, people still overwhelmingly talk about PostHog for analytics above other stuff)

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Should this be Blitzscale team members who manage product teams? (Like, I assume our future sales lead or I shouldn't do this. Could be fun though.)

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