# Charles Cook

<p>Based in London, I’m British-Lebanese and grew up in various countries across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. I love terrible jokes, looking at designer houses I will never live in, and tormenting <a href="https://stephcook.com/">my wife</a> and children with my piano playing.</p>

<p>Get in touch if you ever want to chat all things scaling when it comes to startups! Just stick hello in front of this site.</p>

<hr />

<h2 id="what-im-doing-now">What I’m doing now</h2>

<p>GTM @ <a href="https://posthog.com">PostHog</a></p>
<ul>
  <li>$0 -&gt; $50m ARR, 10 people -&gt; 200, $14m raised -&gt; $194m</li>
  <li>Scaling the sales, CS, marketing, demand gen, and support machine, from zero to many</li>
  <li>Founding ops, finance, talent, and people person</li>
  <li>Writing large chunks of our public <a href="https://posthog.com/handbook/">handbook</a></li>
  <li>Keeping the culture weird with things like <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wololo_another-cheeky-posthog-boi-yes-the-phone-activity-7285232900646555651-A7Vh">unhinged billboards</a>, <a href="https://www.isgoogleanalyticsillegal.com/">isgoogleanalyticsillegal.com</a> and <a href="https://www.dictatorortechbro.com/">dictatorortechbro.com</a></li>
</ul>

<hr />

<h2 id="things-ive-written-about">Things I’ve written about</h2>

<p>General</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/collaboration-sucks">Collaboration sucks</a> - hit #1 on Hacker News</li>
  <li><a href="https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/32-things-weve-learned-from-scaling">32 things we’ve learned about building a startup that scales</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/how-i-actually-get-good-advice">How I actually get good advice</a></li>
</ul>

<p>Marketing</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/startup-marketing-for-noobs-by-noobs">Startup marketing for noobs</a> (co-author)</li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/blog/dev-marketing-for-startups">Developer marketing for early-stage startups - what I’ve learned</a> - hit #1 on Hacker News</li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/blog/dev-marketing-paid-ads">Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we’ve learned</a> - hit #1 on Hacker News</li>
</ul>

<p>Sales</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/founders/negotiate-software-better">How software salespeople will try to screw you (and how to fight back)</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/founders/how-to-buy-software-enterprise">How to buy software in an enterprise company</a></li>
</ul>

<p>Hiring</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/43-things-weve-learned-about-hiring">43 things we’ve learned about hiring at PostHog</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/founders/write-great-job-ads">Obvious and non-obvious ways to write great job ads</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-144835928">Hiring (and managing) cracked engineers</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/founders/what-recruiters-see">What startup recruiters actually see when you apply for a job</a></li>
</ul>

<p>Ops &amp; Finance</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/blog/how-secondaries-actually-work">How startup secondaries actually work</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/founders/registering-trademarks">Don’t bother securing your trademarks in the beginning</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://posthog.com/blog/first-ops-hire">Making your first startup ops hire - what founders should look for</a></li>
</ul>

<hr />

<h2 id="what-ive-done-before">What I’ve done before</h2>

<p>founder @ <a href="http://hedgehog.vc">hedgehog.vc</a></p>
<ul>
  <li>Created a <a href="http://hedgehog.vc">VC fund</a> from scratch during a 48-hour hackathon, focused on early-stage open source investing, made one investment and they got into YC</li>
  <li>Now retired after making one investment (phew)</li>
</ul>

<p>COO @ <a href="https://vitl.com">Vitl</a></p>
<ul>
  <li>Looked after ops, product, R&amp;D, CS, and legal</li>
  <li>Was interim CTO for a lot longer than was sensible</li>
  <li>Ran process for 2 big licensing deals to giant pharma companies</li>
</ul>

<p>Various @ <a href="https://roli.com">ROLI</a></p>
<ul>
  <li>$0 -&gt; $XXm ARR, 15 people -&gt; 150, $4m raised -&gt; $70m</li>
  <li>Did basically every non-engineering role (all ops flavours, product, Chief of Staff, program management, etc.)</li>
  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/clIR3IJYp5Q">Met Stevie Wonder</a></li>
</ul>

<hr />

<h2 id="where-ive-studied">Where I’ve studied</h2>

<ul>
  <li>University of Cambridge - <em>BA Hons, Law</em></li>
  <li>SOAS, University of London - <em>MSc, Public Policy &amp; Management</em></li>
  <li>Imperial College, London - <em>MBA</em></li>
</ul>

<hr />

<h2 id="books-im-reading">Books I’m reading</h2>

<p>I use <a href="https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/piemets">Storygraph</a> and always appreciate a recommendation</p>

<p>A separate study list of things I find interesting is below.</p>

<hr />


# Reading and watch list

Non-Storygraph reading list, mainly covering science/AI/maths topics.

## Current
- [CS50x](https://www.edx.org/certificates/professional-certificate/harvardx-computer-science-for-artifical-intelligence) (Malan, ~300hrs)

## To read/watch list

### AI/Computer Science
- [Gwern Branwen - How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI's Trajectory](https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/gwern-branwen) (Dwarkesh, 1.5hrs)

### Maths & Physics
- [The Theoretical Minimum](https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses) (Susskind, ~200hrs)
- [College Algebra/Trig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkUEsP9efFg&list=PLDesaqWTN6ESsmwELdrzhcGiRhk5DjwLP&index=2) (Prof Leonard, ~50hrs)
- [Bridging the Gap to University Mathematics](https://archive.org/details/bridginggaptouni0000hurs/mode/2up) (Gould & Hurst, ~100hrs)

### Quantum computing
- [Quantum Country](https://quantum.country/) (Matuschak & Nielsen, ?hrs)

## Finished reading/watching

### AI
- [Intro to Large Language Models](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjkBMFhNj_g) (Karpathy)
- [Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI) (Karpathy)
- [How I use LLMs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWvNQjAaOHw) (Karpathy)
- [Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCEmiRjPEtQ) (YC)
- [Neural Networks series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk&list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi) (3b1b)
- [What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/) (Wolfram)
- [Situational Awareness](https://situational-awareness.ai/) (Aschenbrenner)
- [AI as Normal Technology](https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology)

### Computer Science
- [But what is quantum computing? (Grover's Algorithm)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWpF2Gb-gU) (3b1b)

### Maths
- [Thinking outside the 10-dimensional box](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwAD6dRSVyI) (3b1b) and other similar videos
- [Bayes' Theorem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZGCoVF3YvM) (3b1b, 15min)
- [The Essence of Calculus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUvTyaaNkzM&list=PLZHQObOWTQDMsr9K-rj53DwVRMYO3t5Yr) (3b1b, 3hrs)