Abe

Founder at SmartDial

[Abe @abeqarm]

SmartDial is growing.

We finally have paying customers.

[Abe @abeqarm]

I have no choice but to bootstrap after shift and on weekends.

[Abe @abeqarm]

If your startup grows by word of mouth.

You won the lottery!

[Abe @abeqarm]

Realized Zoom launched a product similar to SmartDial, built natively into their app. Could crush us. What’s the best course of action?

[Abe @abeqarm]

Launched SmartDial a couple months ago. Getting users slowly. For those who’ve been here before — what actually helped you speed up growth?

Asking for real feedback.

[Abe @abeqarm]

If you’re not embarrassed by how you got your first users…
You probably waited too long to start.

[Abe @abeqarm]

Your first 50 users = not coming from ads.
They’re coming from DMs, cold calls, and uncomfortable conversations.

[Abe @abeqarm]

Is writing blogs still worth it?

[Abe @abeqarm]

@s_chiriac u’re not my target user.

[Abe @abeqarm]

I just published Cold Calling in 2026: The Fastest Way to Get Your First 100 Users https://t.co/rrdgvwoAaf

[Abe @abeqarm]

I just published 5 Reasons Your Startup Still Needs Cold Calling in 2025 (And How to Make It Work) https://t.co/ij7nYb9pex

[james hawkins @james406]

Hello everyone!

We’ve got some exciting news to share. We raised a Series E – $75M at $1.4Bn, led by @peakxvpartners with significant participation from existing investors. We can now proudly upgrade our status from unicorn adjacent to unicorn.

Most will talk about how they feel humbled at this stage and, let’s face it, even the biggest fans of LinkedIn will glaze over. So, I’m going to tell you a story along these lines instead.

I was in San Francisco last week. One evening I’d been at a dinner with a group of other startup founders. Afterwards, I was walking back to my hotel when suddenly, out of the gloomy darkness, probably 100 yards behind me, I heard “JAAAAMES”.

If you’ve ever walked along Mission late at night, this meant I was either about to get assaulted, or a high five. I turned around and saw a guy leaning out of his car window. “OH MY GOD NO WAY! IT’S THE POSTHOG GUY. I LOVE POSTHOG!!”.

I probably wouldn’t have recognized my mom in those conditions. It really struck me that we’ve always felt supported by our users and fans – we’ve been able to do so much of our work with a smile on our faces. We are very lucky. Either that or our billboards with my face on worked.

So, why’d we raise?

We are starting Act 2 of PostHog. We are going deeper into being a devtool, not "just" analytics. We will keep improving our existing tools, and adding more of them to generate better insights into how your products are performing, but we're also going to start working on generating pull requests for you.

Today, we know that engineers like you start work, and immediately wade through escalated support tickets, Slack, email, whatever customers said in the latest call – often only by the afternoon to start working on new features.

We want you to be able to start work, and then immediately see a list of PRs, already made for you automatically based on all the things that popped up since you last logged in.

This means for smaller issues, your workflow gets you straight into merging, closing, unblocking, or editing. It doesn’t stop there, though. Once a feature is released, we add things like event tracking, feature flags, experiments and even messages to be sent for feedback, automatically.

This is likely to overload my inbox, but if you’re interested in hearing more then email me back. We’ll gradually be releasing the very earliest versions of this to keen early adopters for feedback.

On Peak XV

Tim and I first came across Peak XV when we saw our friends at Supabase raise from them, then Arnav (someone who has been working with us closely for years) introduced us to Shailendra. We just clicked.

Choosing Peak XV was about the people. In every meeting with Shailendra, he has come across as genuine, excitable, and hard working. Peak quickly proved themselves a delight to work with, and when we received an offer from them, we felt they were the best way for us to keep building. And that’s all that really matters to our users.

So, on that note, please go back to building your companies!

- James, Tim and our spiky little team at PostHog

[Abe @abeqarm]

@james406 @peakxvpartners Congrats, James! Posthog is great.

[Abe @abeqarm]

does sharing your startup story really worth it?

[Abe @abeqarm]

post impressions mean nothing period.

[Abe @abeqarm]

Startup life: customers ghost you harder than your ugliest relationship ever did

[Abe @abeqarm]

Had my product on BETA for 3 months since launch, I have a few users.

Should I add a paywall?

[Abe @abeqarm]

Startups grow on conversations, not dashboards.
Cold calling isn’t old school—it’s survival.

[Abe @abeqarm]

5 reasons your startup needs cold calling to get users (yes, even in 2025) 🧵

[Abe @abeqarm]

We built SmartDial to make those calls less painful—cutting the wrap-up time and helping sales teams focus on actual conversations.