Joe Martin's README

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Bio

This is my fifth start-up.

Before I took up Product Marketing I was a Content Marketer, a Copywriter and a Journalist. Before that I was a clown, a chainsaw salesman and a cleaner in a morgue. It's been a strange life.

I live just outside of London. I'm passionate about punk music, videogame preservation and garlic. I can't ride a bike.

How I can help you

  • I can help you figure out the right way to communicate anything, to anyone.
  • I can help you with a broad range of marketing tasks, including sales enablement.
  • I can help you understand our customers, our competitors or the press.
  • I can help with literally anything involving writing, editing or proof-reading.
  • I enjoy helping others. You can ask me anything. There are no stupid questions.
  • I help engineering with marketing stuff. Need content for a new feature? I'm your man.
  • I can help you work with many of our customers, partners or other external parties.

How to work with me

  • I can be over-communicative and need to be challenged on this.
  • I have a very hands-on attitude and will never say 'That's not my job'.
  • I'm really uncomfortable with being in the limelight. I prefer private thank yous.
  • I value compassion and inclusivity above everything else. I try to put people first.
  • I struggle with anxiety and always feel like I'm failing. Direct feedback helps me lots.

Areas of focus - H1 2023

In Q4 2022 I focused on improving announcements, growing word of mouth and collaborating with Growth to improve onboarding. Projects in these areas included the launch of PostHog EU, scaling up our investment in our G2 profile, creating new case studies and migrating to Customer.io to create new first onboarding flow. Results and feedback across these project has been positive.

There were also projects which I failed to focus on, or chose to deprioritize. These included launching a PostHog ambassador program and doing deeper work with our partners. I also completely failed to read any of the Product Design books I bought.

In the first half of 2023 I'm focusing on the same basic areas, but with new projects to support them.

  • Onboarding: I'll continue to leverage Customer.io by trialling new campaigns which upsell or accelerate our users to additional products, such as Session Recording. I'll continue to improve and optimize the onboarding process and make word-of-mouth amplification part of that process too. I'll invest time in creating dashboard templates, when possible.
  • Announcements: I'll overhaul our approach to release announcements, create a process for handling service disruption notifications better and continue to support the Roadmap project.
  • Word of mouth growth: I'll continue to improve our G2 ranking and completely automate the process for reviews, with the aim of moving us into the Top Ten competitors. I'll collect and hand over feedback we get to the relevant teams. I'll test some small-scale event sponsorships too.
  • Personal Goal: I'm going to read those product design books.

This list is not exhaustive and is meant to guide the sort of work I do at a high level. If something more important comes up where I'll have more impact? Pivoting is fine.

Feedback

In past feedback sessions I've been told that I'm an effective communicator and executor, that others recognise how I default to transparency and that I show bravery in how vulnerable and direct I am with feedback. I've had especially positive feedback recently about work I do with external parties and customers, and my ability to take ownership of large projects.

I've previously used forms to gather feedback from engineering teams, outside of 360 sessions. These teams have given me positive feedback on my ability to prioritize and to give thoughtful, detailed feedback on the product. Constructively I was asked to get more involved in engineering projects at a conceptual stage, when I can be most impactful. PostHog team members can read notes about this from my previous career chat for more info.

Constructively I've had feedback from the team I work with that, because I generate a lot of ideas, the 'wilder' ideas can often overshadow the more thoughtful and impactful concepts. I've also had consistent feedback that I can be overcommunicative and that, when giving feedback, I default to detailed line edits rather than big picture suggestions. As a result I'm currently trying to communicate more conscisely, especially when I'm between major projects and hunting for areas of focus.

I'm always open to more feedback, from anyone. Got some? Send it to me!

Questions?

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