Growth tactics, retention strategies, and becoming a better writer | Julian Shapiro (Demand Curve, Hyper, Webflow, TechCrunch)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2022

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Julian Shapiro is widely known as the founder of Demand Curve, where he’s helped thousands of companies figure out their growth strategy. He also wrote the growth marketing column at TechCrunch, was CMO at Webflow, and even created an animation engine called Velocity that’s now used in apps like Uber and WhatsApp. In today’s episode, Julian dives deep on product-led acquisition (PLA) and why he believes it’s the best way to grow your company. He shares specific marketing strategies for growth and retention and speaks about his framework for creating novel, engaging content, and how to choose topics for that content. He also discusses a framework called the Curiosity Faucet, inspired by prolific creators such as Ed Sheeran, John Mayer, Taylor Swift, and Neil Gaiman, to help you unlock your own creativity.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/growth-tactics-retention-strategies-and-becoming-a-better-writer-julian-shapiro-demand-curve-hyper-webflow-techcrunch/#transcript

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Where to find Julian Shapiro:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Julian

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-shapiro/

• Website: https://www.julian.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• Flatfile: https://www.flatfile.com/lenny

• Eppo: https://www.geteppo.com/

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Referenced:

• Paul Graham’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulg

• Julian’s guide on startup growth channels: https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/growth-channels

• Topic selection: https://www.julian.com/guide/write/ideas

• Product-led acquisition: https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/product-led-acquisition

• Novelty: https://www.julian.capital/growth-strategy/content-marketing

• Julian’s example of counter-narrative novelty: https://twitter.com/julian/status/1348001396277186560

• Julian’s example of counterintuitive novelty: https://twitter.com/julian/status/1348001397753532416

• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/

• Neil Gaiman Teaches the Art of Storytelling: https://www.masterclass.com/classes/neil-gaiman-teaches-the-art-of-storytelling

• Ed Sheeran, Songwriter: https://music.apple.com/us/music-movie/songwriter/1411353855

• John Mayer describes his songwriting process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cNRDWEXnrQ

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In this episode, we cover:

(03:42) Julian’s background

(04:46) Why Julian hasn’t been tweeting frequently

(07:43) Advice for building a Twitter following

(09:53) The main reason Julian creates handbooks

(11:33) The difference between e-handbooks and newsletters

(13:25) What is product-led acquisition?

(16:20) The categories of product-led acquisition

(22:31) What is billboarding, and how can you take advantage of it?

(25:56) UGC—leveraging user-generated content for free advertising

(29:33) Strategies for retaining users

(38:36) How to keep novelty high in writing

(45:50) Julian’s framework for choosing writing topics

(54:35) The creativity faucet—how to unclog your pipes and get it going

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	why do good ideas arrive after the bad ideas are empty?
0:04.0	It's because when you've gone through a bunch of bad ideas,
0:07.0	your brain, your mind starts reflexively identifying what elements are causing the badness, then it becomes way better at avoiding
0:15.1	those bad elements and you become way better at pattern matching the novel ideas
0:20.2	with way greater intuition. And so like most creators are resisting their bad ideas.
0:25.0	So if you sat down, scribbled a few thoughts in a blank document and just walked away
0:28.0	because you weren't struck with gold, then you never actually finished the creative process.
0:32.0	No, there's no way you would have come up with gold.
0:37.0	Welcome to Lenny's podcast.
0:38.9	I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better
0:41.7	at the craft of building and growing products.
0:44.4	I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences
0:48.9	building and scaling today's most successful companies.
0:51.7	Today my guest is Julian Shapiro.
0:54.2	I actually spend a bunch of time introducing
0:56.4	the wondrous Julian at the beginning of the episode,
0:58.6	so instead let me just share some of the things that we talk about.
1:01.4	We get into a framework he calls product-led acquisition which is work that has come out of his working with thousands of companies helping to figure out their growth strategies we get into waste increase increase your products for tension.
1:12.8	Then we talk a lot about writing,
1:14.5	the importance of novelty in your writing,
1:16.6	how to choose a topic when you plan to write,
1:19.0	and then a framework that Julian calls the Creativity Fawcett.
	...

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