posthog-pls-transition-leads

What this skill does

# PostHog Transition Lead Qualification & Outreach

Research, qualify, and recommend the right play for product-led leads hitting a billing transition. These fall into two categories:

1. **Startup rolloff** — Customers on PostHog's startup program ($50K free credits / 1 year) who are either nearing the end of the year or burning through credits fast enough to exhaust them early.
2. **High first invoice** — Users (free-tier-to-paid or new signups) whose first real invoice will be >= $2K, meaning they've crossed from casual usage into meaningful spend.

## What Makes Transition Leads Different from Big Fish

These are NOT cold outreach leads. The person is already a PostHog customer with real usage history. That changes the research depth, the framing, and the goal:

- **You already have data.** Vitally has their full usage history, billing data, and credit status. Lean on it — the billing analysis IS the research for these leads.
- **The trigger is a financial event, not a signup.** They're about to see their first real bill, or lose remaining credits. The outreach should help them navigate that transition, not introduce PostHog.
- **The goal is retention through the transition.** These accounts are already getting value from PostHog. The risk is sticker shock, not lack of adoption. Your job is to help them optimize their setup so the transition feels manageable — and to be the person they reach out to if they have questions about billing.
- **It's OK to reference billing directly.** Unlike big fish outreach (where you avoid commercial topics entirely), transition leads expect a conversation that touches on credits, usage, and costs. Frame it as optimization support, not a sales pitch.

## Core Workflow

1. **Parse the lead** — Identify lead type (startup rolloff vs. high first invoice) from matching criteria
2. **Check Vitally (billing-heavy)** — Account activity, users, products, and deep billing analysis
3. **Light company research** — Only if the company context is thin or unfamiliar
4. **Billing analysis** — Calculate post-transition costs, identify optimization opportunities
5. **Qualify and recommend a play** — Outreach / Light Touch / Skip
6. **Draft outreach** — Using the appropriate hooks for the lead type
7. **Validate all URLs** — Fetch every link in the draft to confirm it resolves

## Step 1: Parse the Lead

Identify which type of transition lead this is from the Salesforce matching criteria:

- **Startup rolloff**: Look for "startup rolloff", "credit spend", "credits expiring", "startup plan" in matching criteria. The account will be on the startup program with credits that are either expiring soon or being consumed rapidly.
- **High first invoice**: Look for "first invoice", "$2K", "high usage" in matching criteria. The account has crossed a usage threshold where their first invoice will be significant.

Some leads may have both signals (e.g., a startup rolling off credits whose first real invoice will be large). Treat these as startup rolloff — the credit expiry is the more urgent and specific hook.

## Step 2: Check Vitally (Billing-Heavy)

This is the most important step. For transition leads, the billing data matters more than firmographics.

### 2a: Find the Account

Search for the account in Vitally. The most reliable lookup is **user email** via `get_user_details`. If the email lookup returns the user with their account, use `get_account_full` on the account ID to pull complete billing data.

### 2b: Billing Data to Extract

Pull these fields from the account traits and Stripe data:

**For startup rolloff:**
- `amount_off` — remaining credit balance (from the original $50K)
- `amount_off_expires_at` — when credits/discount expire
- `stripe.metadata.startup_plan_end_at` — when the startup plan ends
- `stripe.metadata.credit_expires_at` — when credits expire (may differ from discount expiry)
- `creditRunwayDays` — at current spend, how long until credits are consumed
- Stripe MRR / last invoice amount — current monthly spend
- Stripe subscription details — which plan lines they're on
- Whether the account is in "Credits expiring before consumption" segment

From these, calculate:
- **Days until credit expiry** — how urgent is this?
- **Credit utilization** — how much of the $50K have they used?
- **Post-credit monthly cost** — what will their first real invoice look like?
- **Credit waste** — how much of the remaining credit will go unused?

**For high first invoice:**
- Stripe MRR / estimated first invoice amount
- Which products are driving the cost (events, recordings, feature flag requests, etc.)
- Whether billing limits are set
- Usage growth trajectory (is spend accelerating?)

### 2c: Check Users in the Account

Use `get_account_users` on the account ID. Note:
- **User count** — how many people are using PostHog?
- **Active users in last 30 days** — is the team actively engaged?
- **Vitally segments per user** — which products is each person using?
- **Who's the org Owner?** — this is usually the person who set up the account

For transition leads, user count still matters for prioritization, but unlike big fish leads, even a single-user account can be worth outreach if the spend is significant. A solo founder burning $3K/month on PostHog deserves a heads-up about their credits expiring.

**Who to address the outreach to:** The lead email from Salesforce is typically the person who created the PostHog account — but that's not always the right person to email. Look at who's actually active: recent last-seen dates and the highest number of sessions/segments. The most active user is your best target — they're the one with the deepest relationship to PostHog and the most context on how the team uses it. If the lead contact hasn't been active recently but someone else on the team has, address the email to the team (e.g., "Hey [Company] team") or to the most active user directly. Note the discrepancy in your output so the TAE can make the call.

### 2d: Check Products and Usage

From the account traits and user segments, identify:
- Which PostHog products are in active use
- The heaviest cost drivers (look at replay count, feature flag requests, event volume)
- Any obvious optimization opportunities (see Step 4)

### 2e: Check Conversations and Notes

Use `get_account_conversations` and `get_account_notes` to see if anyone from PostHog has already been in touch. For startup accounts, there's often a conversation from when they joined the startup program — note when it happened and who was involved, but it doesn't mean someone is actively working the account.

**Pay special attention to recent billing-related support tickets.** If the account filed a support ticket about billing, usage, or costs in the last 1-2 weeks, that changes the outreach significantly — they're already thinking about costs and have already engaged with PostHog on the topic. Flag this prominently in your output. The TAE's outreach should feel like a natural extension of that conversation (e.g., "saw your team had some questions about replay billing — happy to help you think through the bigger picture on costs as usage grows"), not a separate cold touch that ignores the context. Piling on with a generic transition email right after a billing support ticket feels tone-deaf.

### 2f: Check for Duplicate Accounts

Search Vitally for other accounts on the same email domain. Large companies sometimes have multiple PostHog orgs. If the lead's account is a duplicate of a more established one, flag it.

## Step 3: Light Company Research

For startup rolloff leads, you likely already know enough from Vitally and the startup program context. Only do web research if:
- You can't tell what the company does from Vitally data alone
- The company name is ambiguous and could be multiple entities
- You want to check recent funding or growth signals that might affect the conversation

For high first-invoice leads from unknown companies, do a quick web search:
- What does th