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

**Julian Shapiro** (0:00)
Why do good ideas arrive after the bad ideas are empty? It's because when you've gone through a bunch of bad ideas, your brain, your mind starts reflexively identifying what elements are causing the badness. Then it becomes way better at avoiding those bad elements, and you become way better at pattern matching the novel ideas with way greater intuition.
And so like most creators are resisting their bad ideas. So if you sat down, scribbled a few thoughts in a blank document, and just walked away because you weren't struck with gold, then you never actually finished the creative process. No, there's no way you would have come up with gold.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:36)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. Interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies. Today my guest is Julian Shapiro. I actually spent a bunch of time introducing the wondrous Julian at the beginning of the episode. So instead, let me just share some of the things that we talk about. 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 ways to increase your product's retention. Then we talk a lot about writing, the importance of novelty in your writing, how to choose a topic when you plan to write, and then a framework that Julian calls the Creativity Faucet.
Julian is such a fascinating human, and I am really excited to bring you this episode. And so with that, I bring you Julian Shapiro.
I'm excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey John.

**John Cutler** (1:37)
Hey Lenny, excited to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:38)
John, give us a behind the scenes at Amplitude. When most people think of Amplitude, they think of product analytics.
But now you're getting into experimentation and even just launched a CDP. What's the thought process there?

**John Cutler** (1:50)
Well, we've always thought of Amplitude as being about supporting the full product loop. Think collect data, inform bets, ship experiments and learn. That's the heart of growth to us.
So the big aha was seeing how many customers were using Amplitude to analyze experiments, use segments for outreach and send data to other destinations. Experiment and CDP came out of listening to and observing our customers.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:11)
And supporting growth and learning has always been Amplitude's core focus, right?

**John Cutler** (2:15)
Yeah, so Amplitude tries to meet customers where they are. We just launched starter templates and have a great scholarship program for startups. There's never been a more important time for growth.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:24)
Absolutely agree. Thanks for joining us, John, and head to amplitude.com to get started.
Hey, Ashley, head of marketing at Flatfile. How many B2B SaaS companies would you estimate need to import CSV files from their customers?

**Ashley** (2:38)
At least 40%.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:39)
And how many of them screw that up? And what happens when they do?

**Ashley** (2:43)
Well, based on our data, about a third of people will consider switching to another company after just one bad experience during onboarding. So if your CSV importer doesn't work right, which is super common considering customer files are chock full of unexpected data and formatting, they'll leave.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:02)
I am 0% surprised to hear that. I've consistently seen that improving onboarding is one of the highest leverage opportunities for both sign-up conversion and increasing long-term retention.
Getting people to your aha moment more quickly and reliably is so incredibly important.

**Ashley** (3:17)
Totally. It's incredible to see how our testers like Square, Spotify and Zura are able to grow their businesses on top of Flatfile.
It's because flawless data onboarding acts like a catalyst to get them and their customers where they need to go faster.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:33)
If you'd like to learn more or get started, check out Flatfile at flatfile.com/lenny.
Julian Shapiro is what I call a polymath of the internet. He's an amazing writer, marketer and growth mind, investor, community builder, podcaster, tweeter. He's also an expert on building muscle. He's maybe most known for being the founder of Demand Curve, YC startup that trains people on growth and marketing. Prior to that, he was a part-time columnist at TechCrunch. He was also VP of marketing at Webflow, which I had no idea about. He also created a JavaScript web animation engine that is used by Uber and WhatsApp and Samsung and thousands of companies. Currently, he is a full-time investor with his own fund and as a partner at Hyper. He's also one of the most hilarious and generous humans that I know.