PostHog Handbook Library / Growth

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# How to pitch self-driving

This is a living page for how we pitch PostHog as a self-driving product. It covers the core pitch, how to run it, and a reverse demo format that lets the customer experience self-driving on their own data. We're still early, so treat this as a starting point and iterate on it as we practice the pitch and learn what lands.

#### The core pitch

Keep it simple. Something like this:

> PostHog already has all the behavioral data about how people use your product. We turn that data into signals, feed those signals to an agent running in a sandbox, and it automatically opens PRs that improve your product. That's a self-driving product, and the more you put into PostHog, the better the signals get.

That last line is the flywheel line. Every event, flag, and replay you capture sharpens the signals the agent works from, so more data in means better PRs out.

#### Why it works

The pitch resonates because the customer connects the dots themselves. You don't have to convince anyone that behavioral data is valuable, because they already believe it. You're just showing them the obvious next step, which is that data shouldn't sit in a dashboard waiting for a human to act on it. It should drive changes to the product directly.

When it goes well, the customer arrives at the conclusion before you finish. We've seen this play out on an on-site: as the pitch unfolded the team worked through it out loud, described the exact signals use case back to us, and then started sequencing their own rollout, ending with asking whether they should do a Fable 5 audit of all their instrumentation first to make sure they're tagging everything and getting as much as possible into PostHog.

When the customer starts planning their instrumentation rollout unprompted and immediately, you know pitch has landed!

#### How to run it

- Lead with the data they already have. Start from the behavioral data they're capturing in PostHog today, not from the agent. The agent is the payoff, not the opener.
- Draw the line from data to PR. Walk through it: data goes to signals, signals to an agent in a sandbox, and the agent to PRs that ship improvements. Let them follow the chain rather than asserting the conclusion.
- Land the flywheel. Make sure they leave understanding that more data means better signals means better PRs. This is what turns it from a feature into a reason to instrument everything.
- Let them sequence the rollout. The strongest outcome is the customer proposing their own instrumentation audit. When they get there, help them plan it, since that's the start of the flywheel.

#### The reverse demo

A reverse demo (a term Clay recently popularized) flips the usual script: instead of you driving a polished demo environment, the customer drives their own data. It's a faster path to the aha moment because the value shows up in their product, not a sandbox account.

The honest catch for us is that a reverse demo only works once there's enough clean data in PostHog for the agent to act on. Clay can have someone build a lead list on the first call before they're even a customer; we can't conjure signals out of an empty project. That makes the reverse demo a great fit for existing customers who already have the data flowing (a natural play for TAMs), and a tougher one for prospects who haven't connected anything yet (TAEs will usually need to get data flowing first, see the pre-call prep below).

##### Pre-call prep

The whole demo depends on there being real signals to work from, so set that up before the call:

- Ask them to turn on error tracking and session replays for a window of time ahead of the call, so the agent has fresh, real signals to act on by the time you meet.
- Have them get PostHog Code downloaded and their GitHub and PostHog connected, so they can kick off a PR live.
- Frame the cost honestly: offer to credit any usage on errors and replays during the demo window, since you need them on to show it at its best, and they can turn them back off after. If it wows them, they'll want to keep them on anyway, and that's the flywheel starting.

##### Running it

Let them drive the whole way. You narrate, they click.

1. Have them open the PostHog Code inbox.
2. Walk them through what they're seeing in the reports and PRs tabs, using their own data.
3. Have them pick a report to inspect and kick off a PR from it themselves.
4. Explain the self-driving part: they can set it up to handle bugfix and maintenance PRs automatically, while humans still drive product decisions and new features. (This is the same line as "robots do maintenance, humans do creative work" below, made concrete.)

Because they're looking at their own product the whole time, the conclusion lands on its own, which is exactly the same dynamic that makes the core pitch work.

#### How to frame it

These are framings that help the pitch land. Reach for them when a customer needs help picturing what self-driving actually means for their team.

- Autonomy from instruction, not from the engineer. Self-driving means the bots don't need to be told every step, not that they ship without you. Nothing gets Yolo-merged without your approval, so the engineer stays in control.
- Robots do maintenance, humans do creative work. Bots are great at fixing bugs and making optimizations, while people are best at building new features. Self-driving is compelling because it puts maintenance mode on autopilot and frees you up to be in build mode.
- It belongs in a shared workspace. The Slack app is a hit because it brings self-driving behavior into a space the whole team shares. Marketers can prompt work, engineers can help steer it, and everyone gets to feel like an F1 driver.
- It's more than cruise control. Agentic workflows from other companies are basically cruise control, keeping you in the lane you already picked. Self-driving takes you down a road you didn't know was there.

#### Iterating on this page

We're actively refining this pitch. If you run it and learn something, whether what resonated, what fell flat, or a better way to frame the flywheel, add it here so the whole team gets sharper.

Canonical URL: https://posthog.com/handbook/growth/sales/how-to-pitch-self-driving

GitHub source: contents/handbook/growth/sales/how-to-pitch-self-driving.md

Content hash: `f0e689702632381f`