# We spend $45,000 on doing more weird every month

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# We spend $45,000 on doing more weird every month

-   [

    ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/c_scale,w_50/charles_525b6ac4e2)

    Charles Cook](/community/profiles/28625.md)

Aug 05, 2026

-   [Culture](/blog/culture.md),
-   [Marketing](/blog/marketing.md),
-   [Founders](/blog/founders.md)

"Do more weird" is an actual PostHog [company value](/handbook/values.md#do-more-weird), and we have a discretionary $45k/mo budget that anyone can use to bring weird ideas to life. "Operationalizing weirdness" sounds like an oxymoron that some soul-sucking MBA came up with (hey), but there are a ton of ways you can practically inject more weirdness into your company.

Let's get weird.

## Why we do more weird in the first place

There are two answers to this.

The first is tactical - if you work at a startup, you are probably competing with much larger, better-known companies who can easily outspend you. Even if you are an extremely well-funded company, your resources are probably minuscule in comparison to a publicly traded giant. Sure, you need to do all the regular growth playbook stuff, but to actually stand out, you need to get weird.

Take the example of a good old-fashioned marketing blog. Your competition here isn't your competitor's (presumably lame) blog, your competition is everything else that occupies your audience's attention on the internet - TikTok, online shopping, every writer on Substack, etc. Weirdness helps you cut through the noise.

The second answer is more philosophical - the average person is already really weird, so why not do this stuff anyway! Don't believe me? Imagine if you just said every passing thought that was in your head out loud in an office - you probably wouldn't stick around for very long. Given people have so much weirdness swirling around in their brains anyway, why not harness that energy and make the places we work a little bit more fun? Sorry, I mean "why not harness that energy and cynically exploit it in the service of shareholder value."

![Candle](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/candle_76d58f66cc.jpeg)

![Bus ad](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/q_auto,f_auto/busad_eca71ec131.jpeg)

![Website redesign](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/websie_dd7fe0db65.png)

![Hedgehog Mode](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/hedgehogmode_c78d753360.jpeg)

![DeskHog](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/deskhog_1b816ae669.jpeg)

![Candle](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/candle_76d58f66cc.jpeg)

![Bus ad](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/q_auto,f_auto/busad_eca71ec131.jpeg)

![Website redesign](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/websie_dd7fe0db65.png)

![Hedgehog Mode](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/hedgehogmode_c78d753360.jpeg)

![DeskHog](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/deskhog_1b816ae669.jpeg)

![Candle](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/candle_76d58f66cc.jpeg)

## Remember weirdness is relative

Sometimes the thing you want to do just isn't *that* weird, but that may still be ok depending on the context. For example, transparent pricing is weird in the context of how we bill customers, but it wouldn't make sense to do something truly weird like bartering grain for PostHog credit or something.

On the other hand, the bar for weirdness in a marketing campaign is extremely high, because the world is full of marketing teams trying to do the same thing. A wry smile in response to the idea will not cut it.

Something in the middle would be a small easter egg in your settings page or making a [fairy tale version of a data processor agreement](/dpa.md). Weirdness exists on a spectrum.

## How to do weird wrong

Before we do weird right, first we must avoid doing it wrong:

1.  Don't make weirdness your marketing team's responsibility. They may be the *primary* facilitators, but if weirdness is delegated to your marketing team, you'll eventually gravitate to a bunch of corporate try hard.
2.  Make the weirdness coherent with your brand. If you have a brand that feels very premium and high quality, weirdness may take shape as an unusual spin on your sales process that delights customers, or a unique take on an event.
3.  Inside jokes are funny internally. They are not funny to your users. If you're not sure, ask a friend externally who matches your ICP – "I hate it" is okay, but "I don't get it" is not.
4.  Don't forget that it's a numbers game. If you pitch a few ideas or ship something that doesn't land, don't give up! What you see at PostHog is just a tiny fraction of the many terrible ideas we've had internally.
5.  It's more than just "lets have a cool merch line with funny items." Merch is a lot of work, and we've cut down on the custom one-off items.

## Getting buy-in to do weird stuff

"I want to do more weird, but I'm just a small fish!" This is fair, as it's definitely easier to do more weird early. I suspect it would be a lot harder to introduce do more weird in PostHog's culture now. You also need some level of cultural safety so people don't feel that if they say something too weird they will be fired but rather will get feedback and be able to calibrate themselves for next time.

It is extremely helpful to have a founder or executive sponsor for weird things. Someone who openly encourages it, but is also willing to have some duds (oh boy, we've had some duds). A lot of the billboards we've run have had zero people comment on them. We've had easter eggs that ~3 people have found. We've wasted money on merch people have never worn. Our [documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGaSxBs3OsU) that we spent a ton of time and money on has 2k views.

Individual in a small company? It's probably easy to convince people. Individual in a larger company? Find your executive sponsor. Leader in a larger company? Be the sponsor!

## How to operationalize weird

Assuming you are bought in and excited to do weird stuff, there are a few specific things we do at PostHog to help weird ideas become a real, shipped thing.

We have a dedicated `#do-more-weird` Slack channel where anyone can propose any idea, no matter how ludicrous. If nobody engages with your idea, chances are it wasn't a good one - and that's okay!

Once a month, I have an automated skill scrape the last 30 days of ideas and pitch which ones should get support and why. It takes into account how much they are likely to cost, how much effort they would take, and how enthusiastic the response from the team was. It uses [this handbook page](/handbook/company/do-more-weird.md) as context for what makes a good candidate. A small (2-3 person) group, aka The Council of Weird, then reviews the pitches and decides how to spend the money. When it comes to setting the budget, try 5% of your overall marketing budget first and go from there.

Of course, many weird things don't actually require money - in those cases, we just encourage the person who pitched it to do the thing! There's nothing like basking in the warm glow of your teammates for shipping something like [DeskHog](/deskhog.md) or [Hedgehog Mode](/sparks-joy/hedgehog-mode.md). [Hackathons](/newsletter/hackathons.md) are helpful, but you don't need to wait for one.

## What to do first

Start a `#do-more-weird` Slack channel. Add a diverse group of people to it who are interested in this stuff. Then copy our [playbook](/handbook/company/do-more-weird.md). That's it.

> PostHog is the leading platform for building self-driving products. With a full suite of developer tools – [AI observability](/ai-observability.md), [product analytics](/product-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), [experiments](/experiments.md), [error tracking](/error-tracking.md), [logs](/logs.md), and more – PostHog captures all the context agents need to diagnose problems, uncover opportunities, and ship fixes. A [data warehouse](/context-warehouse.md) and [CDP](/cdp.md) tie it all together, unifying that context into one source agents can read across. You can steer it all from [Slack](/slack.md), [the web app](/ai.md), the desktop ([PostHog Desktop](/desktop.md)), or your own editor via [the MCP](/mcp.md).

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