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Interview w/ Julian Shapiro (part 2)

Summary

In this second part of the interview, Julian Shapiro delves deeper into growth marketing strategies specifically tailored for developers and entrepreneurs. He explains how his repeated startup failures led him to realize that growth methodology was the missing ingredient for success. Julian emphasizes the importance of a “growth first” mindset—prioritizing projects with clear growth potential over those driven purely by passion, as sustainable reward cycles from traction are more likely to maintain long-term motivation.

Julian discusses his agency Bell Curve and its evolution into training others through a bootcamp that compresses years of growth marketing experience into weeks. He highlights the value of abstracted principles over rigid procedures, enabling learners to apply tactics across various channels and contexts. The conversation explores how developers can bring engineering mental models—like systematic prioritization and de-risking—into marketing efforts.

A key takeaway is the power of competitive analysis and pattern matching. Julian advises against working in a vacuum and instead recommends studying successful competitors to identify common effective strategies before focusing on differentiation. He stresses that understanding market size, willingness to pay, and product-market fit are foundational before diving into tactical execution.

Finally, Julian warns about the “trap of inertia,” where relentless hustle without periodic reassessment can lead to misdirected efforts. He encourages developers to regularly pause and evaluate whether their current direction aligns with changing circumstances and goals, ensuring that their hard work is channeled toward genuinely impactful outcomes.

Recommendations

Concepts

  • Growth First Mindset — A central theme of the episode: prioritizing projects based on their growth potential and likelihood of traction over pure passion. Julian argues that sustainable reward cycles from user adoption and feedback are more motivating long-term than initial enthusiasm.
  • Competitive Analysis — Julian strongly advocates for studying successful competitors as a primary method to de-risk projects. Instead of working in a vacuum, he recommends analyzing what others are doing well, identifying common patterns, and meeting minimum standards before focusing on differentiation.

People

  • Paul Graham — Referenced by Julian when discussing startups being ‘default dead’ without growth methodology. Graham’s writings on startups and growth are influential in the entrepreneurial community.
  • Elon Musk — Mentioned in the context of his interview on Wait But Why, where he discusses a process of repeatedly checking assumptions against the outside world to ensure one’s direction remains correct amidst changing contexts.

Websites

  • julian.com — Julian’s website where he publishes free guides on growth marketing, including pages on ad channels, ads, and introductory principles. He recommends it for anyone wanting to validate their startup idea’s growth potential or learn systematic growth tactics.
  • bellcurve.com — Julian’s growth marketing agency website, which also hosts the training bootcamp he mentions. It represents the practical application of the principles discussed, helping companies grow through dedicated growth management and training.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:48 — Introduction to growth for developers and personal projects — Jonathan introduces the episode’s focus on growth marketing for developers, highlighting Julian Shapiro’s experience in growing his own projects and helping others. He sets up the conversation around how developers can apply growth principles to their work beyond just personal development.
  • 00:02:45 — Julian’s early startup failures and the missing growth ingredient — Julian recounts a grueling startup failure that made him question his path after multiple unsuccessful ventures. He realized that the common missing element was a systematic approach to growth—without growth methodology and tactics, startups are “default dead.” This insight led him to pursue growth marketing professionally to de-risk future projects.
  • 00:06:50 — Transition from agency to training and product development — Julian explains how his growth agency Bell Curve is pivoting toward training others through a bootcamp that compresses four years of knowledge into 3.5 weeks. He finds this more emotionally rewarding than running ads for clients. The training emphasizes abstracted principles, live feedback, and applying lessons to real projects learners care about.
  • 00:11:37 — The importance of principles over procedures in learning — Jonathan and Julian discuss the difference between teaching procedural steps versus underlying principles. Julian’s approach focuses on abstracted, universally applicable tactics mixed with mentorship and deliberate feedback. They agree that principles-based learning creates lasting, adaptable skills, unlike procedure-focused training that quickly becomes outdated.
  • 00:15:05 — Engineering mental models applied to growth marketing — Julian draws parallels between engineering prioritization frameworks and growth project management. Both require identifying the most repeatable, high-leverage, and de-risked implementations. He advocates for a “growth first” mindset when selecting projects, arguing that traction and reward cycles ultimately sustain motivation more reliably than initial passion alone.
  • 00:20:46 — Three key questions for evaluating business ideas — Julian shares his essential checklist for assessing startup ideas: ensure the market is large enough, that people in that market are willing to pay enough, and that the product is wanted badly enough to justify purchase. He explains how pattern matching from extensive client data allows him to predict which business models will likely succeed on specific ad channels.
  • 00:23:48 — How to gather data and conduct competitive analysis — Julian advises against relying solely on Google searches for growth strategies. Instead, he recommends directly contacting successful people in your field, studying competitors, and identifying common patterns. For example, podcasters should analyze other successful podcasts targeting similar audiences to understand what works before focusing on differentiation.
  • 00:29:01 — Differentiation vs. competitive analysis and the MVP — Julian argues that differentiation should come after establishing a minimum viable product (MVP). First, identify what makes an offering “good” in your category by studying competitors. Only then should you consider how to differentiate. He warns that focusing on uniqueness too early can lead to failure, citing examples of startups that succeeded despite being similar to predecessors because they executed growth better.
  • 00:34:00 — Ego, flexibility, and long-term goal alignment — The conversation turns to how ego and rigid idealism can hinder good decision-making. Julian notes that many successful B2B enterprise founders never initially envisioned building “boring” businesses but found them rewarding and profitable. Jonathan emphasizes remaining flexible on the specifics of how your values and long-term goals manifest, increasing the likelihood of fulfillment.
  • 00:38:45 — Final advice: beware the trap of inertia — In his closing advice to developers, Julian warns against the “trap of inertia”—working hard without periodically reassessing direction. He stresses the importance of pausing to ask if external changes (new interests, economic shifts) warrant a rethink of priorities. This aligns with Elon Musk’s approach of constantly re-evaluating assumptions against current reality.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2018-11-16T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:41:30

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] I pause and said all of the skills i’m learning how to get the word out systematically.

[00:00:06] I’m they apply equal to start up in fact they apply better to start up because you can do so in service of actually.

[00:00:14] I’m earning revenue and you can put money in to put more fuel on that growth fire is the last time at the mercy of my purely my wits and my resources and my social networking essentially cuz i’m not paying for any this coverage and so.

[00:00:29] It comes down to how else can i use these skills but most importantly i fell in love with the process and i realize this is the branch in my career that i’m now going to pause that and choose a direction and i chose yes use these skills i’ve developed and pursue growth marketing.

[00:00:48] We’re continuing the interview with Julian Shapiro in today’s episode we’re talking about growth for developers not just personal growth but growing your personal projects growing projects that you believe in and Julian has done this he’s done it successfully we’re talking about how Julian accomplished this with his own projects and how he’s doing it with other people as well.

[00:01:14] Thank you so much for listening to developer team my name is Jonathan the trail and my goal in the show is to help driven developers like you connect to your career purpose so you can do better work and have a positive influence on the people around you Julian has figured out what his purpose is now it’s not something that ends you don’t find it and then stop looking for you don’t find it and stop figuring things out so Julian is continuing to grow and we talk about ways that Julian is growing and learning on these episodes the last one.

[00:01:44] In this one so let’s jump straight into the interview with Julian Shapiro it’s such an exciting story and I think a lot of developers aspire to you know the opportunities that that you’ve had Julian and it’s easy to sit back and listen to this and think wow you know Julian is he bats a thousand right he’s he hasn’t missed a beat here but I’d love for you to take a moment before we go into this this area of expertise of yours

[00:02:14] and marketing and specifically as a developer which is particularly important to this show you know having the the cultural understanding of you know having worked on an engineering project moving into marketing I think that’s that’s going to be a very interesting conversation I want to get into that but first I’d love for you to share maybe a moment that you felt was you know a dark moment for you or a huge failure maybe a moment of uncertainty.

[00:02:45] Take us back to that moment and explain kind of how you were feeling and you know what happened to put you there so there was a startup I worked on a few years ago before velocity that was grueling absolutely grueling just wake up till I go to bed Monday to Sunday.

[00:03:03] And I was committed because there was a little bit of investor money and they were my friends I don’t want them down and everyone thought so highly of the idea so is this little concoction of.

[00:03:17] Ego on the line and reputation on the line and also believe strongly an idea so his head strong about it.

[00:03:26] And it’s completely and utterly bombed in the most disastrous of ways like it was gaining some traction was mildly successful everything went wrong at once.

[00:03:38] And I thought to myself I’m twenty three twenty four and this is the.

[00:03:46] Fourth maybe fifth idea been chewing on since I was like sixteen that i took very seriously that just failed as a startup.

[00:03:58] And i think part of what.

[00:04:02] Was such a clear signal in getting good at growth marketing while working on growing velocity.

[00:04:10] Was the realization that the missing ingredient that entire time was the growth experience i was building a startup in a vacuum.

[00:04:22] Divorce in reality of if you don’t grow if you don’t have the methodology for growing don’t know any tactics to grow.

[00:04:29] You are default dead as Paul Graham would say so.

[00:04:37] I realize pretty clearly during velocity that i now have the skills to go and build something and drastically the risk at this time around.

[00:04:47] I was very empowering there’s actually interesting conundrum where after doing growth marketing.

[00:04:54] Professionally in the form of my agency bell curve for you know twenty five companies ever many it’s been so far last couple years.

[00:05:02] I’ve been getting very good at it and increasing my confidence and now i have so much transparency.

[00:05:08] Into what works and what doesn’t that it’s this analysis paralysis.

[00:05:15] Where am i i can i know how to make this this this in this all succeed to varying degrees what’s the expected value and what has the highest upside.

[00:05:24] And i don’t know what to do and sell part of the final of the last few months.

[00:05:31] Has been working with my team to isolate the best ideas and now this growth agency which first and foremost was created to help companies.

[00:05:42] Grow meaning we become the resident vp of growth and run all the rads a b test all their stuff fix all the leaks in their so called fun which we get into.

[00:05:53] And we started with that and now we’re slowly pivoting to other things one of which is training people how to do that themselves and the others building our own stuff so this whole journey of just repeat it start up failures and never get anywhere with them.

[00:06:08] I was about to come full circle cuz we are about to start on a couple ideas that we feel are highly de risked because we know what is likely to succeed or fail when acquiring customers profit.

[00:06:23] Very interesting and so i assume that we’re gonna have to wait to hear about those about those ideas yeah.

[00:06:30] A little bit what is out so far which is really fun to do to work on cuz it’s way more emotionally rewarding.

[00:06:39] Then running ads for start up which is like i mentioned a moment ago training people to be as good as we are growth we just we took six months so i merge my.

[00:06:50] My love for writing a julian dot com and my knowledge of growth and bell curve dot com and we built a full training boot camp.

[00:06:59] And that’s been so rewarding to empower people to do all the stuff we’ve done that took me four years and now they can learn three and a half weeks.

[00:07:08] I figured the rubrics for compressing that knowledge so that’s one of these so called products in the sense that is a separate business from our agency.

[00:07:18] Yeah well for people who may be skeptical of something like an online course how can you know tell me what is it that that makes something like.

[00:07:33] That work well you mentioned the idea of compressing that knowledge you know what what kind of things.

[00:07:42] Would i be able to you know what how am i how am i jumping over the four year gap that you spent and instead how am i getting that that knowledge quicker is it is it that you went through a process of of error and and you tried a bunch of things that didn’t work and then finally arrived at the things that did work or is it something else.

[00:08:04] It’s a very fair question so it’s succeeding at training people growth marketing to our level is a product of two things one is the quality of the training.

[00:08:14] And two is how abstracted the training materials are not high level but abstracted meaning it’s still very low level tactical i’ll tell you exactly what to do but it’s abstracted to the degree they can be applied universally.

[00:08:29] So we’re not giving you like the step by step instructions to make an ad on facebook which we do actually but that’s not all we’re doing so you can repeat those that same successful facebook ad creation across any of these so called ad channels so the quality of the teaching those the most important thing.

[00:08:46] Which is essentially mentorship and deliberate feedback so putting aside my growth agency entirely i just believe strongly in these principles regardless for teaching and learning anything.

[00:08:59] And so you know there’s a reason why pair programming is effective both emotionally and the actual efficacy and the efficiency of training someone to learn ruby for example.

[00:09:09] And you can take some of the same tenants and apply them to training someone on growth which is they write their own home page they rewrite it.

[00:09:18] And then we go on to we go on to a slack screen share.

[00:09:23] Look at what they’ve done give them real time feedback edit it with them explain our internal voice that’s justifying all these edits.

[00:09:33] And we do the same process for ad creation for going through one’s onboarding flow all these different concepts for growth.

[00:09:40] And so the deliberate nature of that feedback is you get that it’s given to you and then we say great try this again but this time do it for another project and so we don’t want to be beat a dead horse here we want to keep reapplying this knowledge and will keep verifying

[00:09:55] whether you’re implementing and so it’s live slack screen shares one-on-one training mixed with have your resources.

[00:10:02] And what’s interesting about it is for it to be more considerate you should be working on projects that are things you material need to be working on.

[00:10:13] And so you don’t want to work again in a vacuum so if someone joins this program or if you’re learning how to pair program ruby.

[00:10:21] In both cases you should build something you actually want for yourself.

[00:10:26] So people coming through our course are going to build a lot of landing page and ads for the product or company actually sells today and then people someone learning ruby should try to build that cool thing they always wanted to exist for themselves so it’s the psychology of the training and then having in depth but abstracted materials that I think can really elevate training.

[00:10:46] Yeah and I think it’s important to note here the what you’re talking about with having these these ideas that can apply across multiple systems.

[00:10:58] Is is this principles training right and it’s not just about you know here is the procedure to create an ad if that’s what made people successful than everyone.

[00:11:11] Who has access to YouTube would be successful right is it Facebook it doesn’t have a you know a special route for you to follow to become a successful advertiser.

[00:11:24] That’s not really what this is about it’s about learning how growth happens how people’s minds work the timing and why right it’s a deeper it’s a deeper understanding.

[00:11:37] I guess I should be really explicit here that Julian is not sponsoring the show in any way and this is not meant to be an advertisement for for this course but.

[00:11:48] Any time that I that I come across a course I always am trying to understand okay what is it that’s being taught here is this a procedure that’s going to expire.

[00:12:00] You know in a year or two right and there’s some value to those courses don’t get me wrongs times procedure is very important but the most valuable things that you can do in your career.

[00:12:11] Are almost always going to be based on principles understanding principles understanding mental models systems ways of thinking.

[00:12:18] And then the procedure is how you apply those things if you only learn the procedure then you’re kind of doing it the backwards way right and unfortunately that knowledge is not going to be able to stick.

[00:12:32] That’s exactly right and that’s also how we’re able to build a business model off of it so just generally speaking for us to be able to work with clients.

[00:12:40] We have to have an eighty twenty approach to nearly everything.

[00:12:44] Because when you’re running growth for fifteen companies at a time and each company has multiple channels which will define now so channels usually in reference to a ad network where you can acquire users from so google search or facebook ads and so on.

[00:13:03] And so when each of those fifteen has seven channels in operation and half a dozen landing page a b test running.

[00:13:14] There’s just so much to manage and that’s where to your point Jonathan abstracted principles not just from the low level tactical perspective.

[00:13:24] But also now from the high level of how do you manage your time what is the framework for knowing which growth projects to work on.

[00:13:31] And so part of growth is really project management or product management and understanding the part of features and the cost that goes into each because.

[00:13:42] Sometimes we get really excited an idea and we’ll be honest with ourselves and say honestly we could just spend a tenth of that on making snapchat ads work a bit better cuz they already do work so why are we trying to spin a pinterest ads out of the blue when we don’t have any sort of precedent for.

[00:13:58] Yeah that’s that’s such an interesting approach.

[00:14:03] For for for many reasons i think for any developer who is considering learning about growth.

[00:14:11] You know i think it’s important to start with this understanding that this isn’t about doing something that that is an add on it’s not it’s not just an extra task it’s an entire discipline.

[00:14:23] I’m that people do for their entire careers right this this is not just a you know a small skill set there there are a lot of things to.

[00:14:34] To really struggle with and and dive into and you can you can actually developing a true mastery level of of a career in this subject.

[00:14:45] So i’d love to know i’m julian coming as a developer into this marketing world.

[00:14:52] I’d love to know some of the things that you were able to bring over some of the mental models as a as an engineer that you were able to bring into your work with marketing that you do.

[00:15:05] Yes the most the most clear parallel would be.

[00:15:12] The engineering approach to product features and the engine and the engineering approach to growth or the the prioritization of of projects in growth in both cases you’re trying to figure out what is the most repeatable.

[00:15:26] Abstracted and highest leverage implementation that’s also the most derisk so there’s a lot of models there let me tie that down to something more concrete which is.

[00:15:36] I now take a growth first mindset to what i’m working on.

[00:15:41] So and this equally applies to our entire conversation open source.

[00:15:46] And let’s start with velocity what i mean by growth first mindset so.

[00:15:52] If i were trying to repeat my steps again i would look for something that i think first and foremost has the potential to grow.

[00:16:02] Now you might make the argument but should you start with what you’re passionate about maybe if you’re lucky the two things will intersect.

[00:16:10] That’s what you really want and that does happen but if you start with what you’re passionate about the problem be blinded to what’s actually realistic to grow.

[00:16:19] Because it’s a lot it takes a lot more more concerted effort to identify those opportunities.

[00:16:24] Then it takes often times moments for you to be like oh yeah there’s a thing i’m super passionate about already.

[00:16:30] And so you don’t really do much you don’t do a real canvassing of yourself emotionally but there’s a thing i really want to do and you’re in the mood you really want to get done.

[00:16:37] That’s not a good litmus test for whether you should work on something.

[00:16:40] Because if you project the half year or a year outward and let’s project that far outward and let’s consider the case of two different people.

[00:16:49] One person shows their passion project where they’re a ten out of ten on how much they love that project.

[00:16:54] I’m in the other person is a six and a half seven and a half out of ten on how passionate they are about their project.

[00:17:01] What the seven and a half person was growth first mindset and the other one didn’t even look at growth or consider it.

[00:17:07] Most likely the person who didn’t look at growth will go through a slog because the vast majority of startups fail and are miserable roller coaster and then sometimes they’re not.

[00:17:18] Show me their ups and downs but for very many people for being honest with each other it’s pure downs the whole startup ride sucks for a given startup.

[00:17:26] I people don’t like to say that but it’s absolutely the truth and so.

[00:17:31] The if you take a snapshot a snapshot then one year later for both never mind their likelihood of success is putting that aside even though that’s my primary point.

[00:17:41] The way they’re going to feel emotionally.

[00:17:45] Is going to be very different in my sit in my scenario the person who actually pursued the thing that is growth first and is actually demonstrating traction meaning people are using it people are happy with it giving feedback you’re iterating on the product.

[00:17:59] Even if you weren’t that passion about that pass for yourself.

[00:18:04] What actually sustains momentum in the long term a year plus is the reward cycle and there’s no reward cycle when you’re feeling through a slog but there is a reward cycle when people are using loving your product and eventually in the long term the way that the curves workout is passions much less relevant.

[00:18:23] And the reward cycle is way more relevant and that is what sustains your interest and so.

[00:18:30] That i feel very strongly about and then eventually you can find passion and entry in other aspects of building a business but if it’s failing there’s not a lot of upside to find in it.

[00:18:43] And so that’s the growth first mindset and why one should normally pursue it and that’s just from the open source perspective but the rewards and the risks are much more tangible when you’re pursuing it in the context of a business right.

[00:18:59] Where you have investor money percent perhaps in the line or your own your own funding and you can possibly make a lot of money and change the lives of your entire team.

[00:19:09] And so there’s even more pressure to take a growth minded or growth first mindset when building a business and what i realize and building bell curve and looking back on all the successes.

[00:19:20] Is i can pattern match what is likely to succeed going forward.

[00:19:25] And i can do risk what i what will likely fail because i have so much inside data so not it not as a picture bell curve not as a picture bell curve training just as an interesting realization i have myself personally.

[00:19:39] Is i’ve been in the weeds so deep with so many founders i’ve been the tactician on the front lines tweaking the facebook ads tweaking the a b test that i have a very clear rubric.

[00:19:53] For what is it to work and i can back out from there and say okay i know what most likely works for acquiring paid customers.

[00:20:00] Now what did those best strategies most strongly correlate with in terms of business models and in terms of what i’m selling to people so is it e-commerce or is it sass and if it’s an e-commerce business am i selling socks or toothbrushes.

[00:20:15] I can keep backing out because i have all this data and i can say okay well toothbrushes at a twenty dollar price point.

[00:20:21] Being sold to women in middle america on instagram in particular on ios devices is probably an easy way to make a million dollars a year.

[00:20:30] Very interesting and how do you know how would you come to that conclusion i i realize that the answer is well and you have to have a lot of experience right but how would how would you come to that conclusion and maybe the better way of asking this question.

[00:20:46] For the format of the podcast is let’s say i meet you on a on a two hour or let’s say maybe a ten minute plane ride and i ask you hey julian i really want to know i want to get better in this ten minute plane ride can you tell me.

[00:21:02] What should i be thinking about what should i be paying attention to what are some things that i’m not doing that i’m not paying attention to that i should be you have a maybe a list of two or three things that you would respond with in that scenario.

[00:21:15] Yeah i would say answer that question specifically i would say make sure the market is big enough.

[00:21:22] Make sure that the people in that market are willing to pay you enough for what you’re selling.

[00:21:30] Make sure what you’re selling is wanted badly enough that people are actually going to fork over cash.

[00:21:36] If you can find something that satisfies those three criteria then you at least have a contender.

[00:21:43] With your contender idea you then need the experience i have which i distill for free on julian.com or a whole guide on growth marketing and one of the pages is called ad channels

[00:21:55] another one’s called ads and also the intro page so there’s three pages in there that give you a lot of this context and so you have your contender.

[00:22:04] And now you paired with the context meaning for each of these ad channels i mentioned earlier pinterest twitter core other so many.

[00:22:12] What did they most commonly succeed with what type of business what is the contender that they most often produce success for.

[00:22:22] And really we’re talking about is what is the audience that is that is located on core engages with core ads and after clicking a core ad actually goes through and buy something from.

[00:22:34] And so if you if you match what’s being sold to the right audience to the right ad channel.

[00:22:41] That is the sort of trifecta that that’s the pattern that i’m speaking of when i say i’m pattern matching to do risk things that’s what i’m doing.

[00:22:50] And i have enough data points to have enough confidence to know the likelihood of one thing being more likely to succeed than the other and i share a lot of this on julian.com.

[00:22:59] And so it would make a lot of sense for somebody like me running a podcast the people who are listening to this podcast the they are exchanging a value with me it’s not dollars but.

[00:23:12] It is absolutely attention and then we have sponsors and this is the behind the scenes really complicated business model we have going on here but.

[00:23:20] We have sponsors that that sponsor the show based on the interest that we attract right and so it would make a lot of sense for somebody like me to go and read about you know how can i pattern match and find ways to grow the show and i can do that on in your guide.

[00:23:40] That’s right and so how would you get that data how would you have enough data to pattern match off of right that’s the real question.

[00:23:48] Because i haven’t grown a podcast that’s what you’re doing and my guy doesn’t talk about podcast explicitly so as a more abstracted approach to this problem.

[00:23:58] Recognize what it is you’re building so you’re building a podcast now recognize who are you selling this to.

[00:24:04] You’re selling it to developers let’s say aspiring developers or senior developers okay maybe you want to make a distinction there.

[00:24:11] And then you can keep going down who is this audience where do they exist once you have the audience right.

[00:24:17] Then you can figure out who is like me so what other podcasts for one to.

[00:24:25] Target the same audience and now you can start identifying the other pieces of data the other data points.

[00:24:32] That you can go and do develop customer development on or you can just call it market research recall this stuff.

[00:24:39] And so what you’re doing cuz you don’t have a growth agency right you are going to go and proactively talk to people who are already doing what it is you’re doing successfully.

[00:24:50] And you’re gonna pick their brains you’re gonna say hey real quick with the top two things working for you you write that down you’re then going to pattern match across all those is identify the commonalities.

[00:25:01] And then you have some sort of prioritization list for what you should be doing yourself to say get more listeners and or get more sponsors and so that applies to any business any idea you do not want to live in a vacuum where you say hi.

[00:25:16] I’m limited by the blog post I can find through Google yeah to actually know how it is I can grow myself that’s crazy if I wanted to.

[00:25:27] Repeat the success that i’ve seen for belcher’s clients.

[00:25:31] I would not spend a minute googling and looking for blog post i would go right to the people who are responsible for success at similar companies that are non competitors to my clients or at competitors but they since left the competitor right.

[00:25:48] And i’ll go and pick their brain and say well what works for you and that is what actually that is the answer i give very often to clients asking questions that are outside the scope of our services like how how should i do x y or z.

[00:26:02] I’ll be blunt i’ll say i don’t have the answer that’s not what i work on but go to link and go through your network and ask people please ask people so don’t just start from some point and this applies to.

[00:26:15] Low level grow tactics on a website or anywhere so for example if you’re trying to spin up a landing page for open source project don’t do it in a vacuum go look at twenty other landing pages for other open source projects which you have some reason to believe are successful.

[00:26:31] That may not in itself in and of itself be enough of a single that these pages are any good but it’s start to proxy.

[00:26:37] And you can identify the commonalities and go from there and so you don’t need to have worked with clients like i have you just need the the the resourcefulness and the hustle to actually go and do some competitive analysis and quite frankly those the two words this entire rambling speech comes down and the reason i’m taking so long to sort of accentuate this is because nobody does it.

[00:27:01] Is competitive analysis busy the most boring way to successfully de risk anything you’re working on yeah and to do it in a way that is that is not just about differentiation right i think there’s there’s a little bit of a.

[00:27:16] I’m of a falsehood that we try to believe about ourselves or about a product that we are a hundred percent unique.

[00:27:25] And while there is probably something hopefully something that is unique about your product or your offering how you differentiate yourself right.

[00:27:33] It’s almost definitely true that you have a lot more in common with somebody else than you think you do there are other shows that cover very similar things to developer t right it would be foolish for me to sit here and say well no we’re the only ones who do what we do right.

[00:27:49] We may be the only ones who do all of the things that we do.

[00:27:53] But we are not the only ones who have a short podcast you know targeted towards engineers for example right that’s that would be ludicrous and so the reality is if we can go you know this is kind of like a an accelerated form of evolution.

[00:28:10] Evolution or a you know formal evolution maybe not but in in you know survival of the fittest the the best win out and therefore when they breed.

[00:28:21] They breed more like themselves and therefore the best continue to get better with this strategy of looking at who is successful and you’re essentially mutating.

[00:28:32] To be more like the successful ones and so you’re you’re you’re without having to die you are evolving it’s a it’s a one of the amazing things that humans are able to do is we are aware we are able to change our environments we’re able to change the things that we do.

[00:28:51] Not just as a result of you know something that we’ve inherited but also because we look around us and we can emulate the things that we see that are successful.

[00:29:01] The distinction you’re making between differentiation and competitive analysis is a very stupid one so it comes down to the expression you have to know the rules before you can break them.

[00:29:13] And you have to know what to similarly you have to know what is the minimum instantiation of this idea for it to be good.

[00:29:22] That is the first thing you want to look for when canvassing competitors.

[00:29:27] If you’re having a podcast it should sound decent you should be able to articulate yourself clearly you should have interesting topic selection and so forth figure out what is the minimum viable product of the thing you’re doing.

[00:29:40] And then worry about differentiating because no one’s going to use you if you’re bad to begin with unless you’re just a very very novel like in a very novelty way focusing on differentiation.

[00:29:51] Maybe that works but that’s pretty much the definition of a fat height so.

[00:29:55] You know the distinction you make is a very wise I think it’s also like you may get lucky right and you’ve probably heard stories about people who say.

[00:30:04] I you know the most important thing is that you’re unique and they are successful somehow right it’s not necessarily because they did it the right way it’s because.

[00:30:13] Oftentimes this this is the the survivorship bias right you didn’t hear about all the people who tried their unique idea out that weren’t successful because they aren’t around anymore they’re not doing the thing that they were doing.

[00:30:25] Anymore because they weren’t able to sustain it just based on some unique feature so if especially if you if you make your unique feature something that isn’t sustainable or that goes below that MVP quality.

[00:30:37] For example if you use you know if you were to go and make your selling feature that you’re this the cheapest whatever thing on the market.

[00:30:46] And you’re undercutting everybody and that’s the way that you’re getting any of your business in the first place that’s not sustainable you’re not going to be able to stick around with that differentiator.

[00:30:55] So it’s extremely important that you think about differentiation as kind of an additional kind of the final piece of the puzzle.

[00:31:03] Rather than you know this is this is the i don’t know where that myth came from it’s a commonly passed around myth in business and marketing that differentiation is key but.

[00:31:17] It’s absolutely a color apart of what your business is but it can kill your business as well.

[00:31:23] That’s right and there’s so many examples of startups that were almost identical to the ones that came before them but they were the ones that took off.

[00:31:31] So many examples and why is that because they grew better and they probably had a better methodology for growth they may have just been lucky.

[00:31:39] What the true line for most of them is they had a better growth methodology.

[00:31:43] Facebook is the is that maybe the best and biggest example of a growth first internal mindset after they built up facebook and they started hiring their first round of execs they put together a team that made every decision based on growth and it paid off.

[00:31:59] Yeah i love that i love that idea by the way that perhaps one of the best takeaways from today’s episode if you’re writing notes or whatever while you’re listening to this episode.

[00:32:07] The idea that you start everything with growth in mind that you you i assume you’ve been prioritized your tasks.

[00:32:15] With with this idea that what are the things that are going to yield the best growth out of this list and because you’re in that situation now where you have everything on your list yield some kind of growth you’re even.

[00:32:27] Saying all right what which of these is gonna yield the most growth of all of the growth things that i have on my list to do yeah and again i think it’s worth calling out that.

[00:32:38] We’re not talking necessarily about growth for growth sake we’re talking about growth for the purpose of implementing a healthy rewards.

[00:32:47] So that you can actually sustain your interest in that thing.

[00:32:51] Or you can experience the byproducts of its success like i do it’s a velocity and to go back a couple talking points.

[00:33:00] You were you were you were wondering how did this myth of differentiation first come about almost like we can we can label it the differentiation first mindset right versus the growth first mindset.

[00:33:11] And here’s just you know i’m just throwing this out there i have i haven’t thought about this very deeply but it might be a reflection of the american individualism.

[00:33:21] Sort of everyone is a snowflake thing where the individuality is heralded as a virtue and being different is heralded heralded as a virtue in the us.

[00:33:31] And maybe that carried over to this new generation of startup founders who feel like everything you do has to be not just world changing but also you need some expression of individual individualism.

[00:33:43] Yeah you know how you should be unique you should be uniquely good at growth yeah that’s the most effective way to be yeah that’s that is an extremely important reality to face that sometimes.

[00:33:55] You know the things that we face our egos and talk about this on the show all the time.

[00:34:00] Our egos will absolutely get in the way of making good decisions of even making decisions that are in our best interest things that we really care about.

[00:34:10] Sometimes our egos will prevent us from making decisions that are healthy for us that are good for us and we can often you know fall victim to this idealism that is at odds with our ultimate goals.

[00:34:25] And a good example of that is a lot of people sort of a refrain among b2b enterprise founders that are young and seeing seeing a lot of growth is they’ll say I never a lot of them are founded by developers.

[00:34:40] And a lot of them will say I never thought I’d be starting a startup that sells to these old boring enterprises right.

[00:34:49] And but it is wildly successful wildly interesting and wildly rewarding yeah like you know much fun this guys are having in the envoy guys are having this is two examples dropbox three examples of young founders in the Bay Area who founded something.

[00:35:08] That they never thought they get into sorry not sig opt I mean century and so these are signed there’s like a huge enterprises and they are much healthier and much higher revenue businesses than than many of their than the average non b2b enterprise counterpart.

[00:35:27] That’s that’s very important that are our perceptions of what a wonderful life looks like our projections of what you know this plays out as how we end up impacting the world or the things the specifics of what we do.

[00:35:44] It’s probably a good idea to remain flexible in the specifics and the things that you want to be in flexible on are those more principle oriented things and perhaps your values right.

[00:35:58] Add the specifics of how those things play out the more flexible you are the more likely you’re gonna see those things can fulfill right there’s those.

[00:36:07] Self expectations or desires are long term like we were discussing earlier in the show is a long term of you know forecast of things that you care about.

[00:36:18] If you remain flexible in the specifics of how that happens then that vision can kind of you know manifest itself a little bit easier I think.

[00:36:28] Yeah I think that’s well said.

[00:36:30] Julie I’d love to ask you two questions real quick to wrap this show up first of all though I want to thank you so much for taking the time I know the people who are listening to the show can be grateful for the candor that you are presenting with and.

[00:36:46] The kind of awareness that you know when you come into a group of developers they’ve heard everything about marketing that they want to hear often times right it seems like developers can be at odds with marketing as as a discipline but hopefully this episode and I know it has for me has changed some of the perspective that developers made by default have and I want to thank you for doing that here on the show.

[00:37:16] I am my pleasure I just hope it was useful I kind of feel like I was just rambling so yeah hopefully there was something well let me ask you these two questions and I can assure you that I found value out of this and I know that the people listening to the show will as well but the first question that I want to ask you to wrap the show up is what do you wish more people would ask you about.

[00:37:38] I wish more people would ask me to validate the growth potential of their startup idea.

[00:37:44] Because I can save them so much time now it doesn’t mean I’m going to be right.

[00:37:50] And I don’t know everything I haven’t worked with every type of business but I have enough of a rubric to say you’re getting yourself into the hardest.

[00:37:59] User acquisition strategy possibly could or not and more because I can’t literally answer everybody’s questions although I do if you send them my way I absolutely would love to but if it gets to too high of a volume what I do is I point people to julian.com because I’ve written a lot about this actually.

[00:38:14] I’m on the first page of my growth marketing guide you can get get a good quick feel for whether you’re in the right direction.

[00:38:21] Excellent excellent so send send at julian on twitter a bunch of tweets with your startup idea and send you.

[00:38:29] Yeah go for it go for it I’ll give it awesome alright and the second question that I want to ask you is if you had 30 seconds.

[00:38:36] Advice to give to developers at all stages in their careers young developers or season developers what would you tell them.

[00:38:45] Let’s see that’s a good question without having premeditated this what’s coming to my mind is beware the trap of inertia.

[00:38:55] So I spent most of this podcast talking about the benefits of inertia that flow state that is in part a result of the reward cycle.

[00:39:04] But conversely it can be a trap and is all the time for myself included so.

[00:39:11] There’s no merit in putting your head down and hustling super hard.

[00:39:16] Without ever taking a breath and pausing to ask yourself am I actually in the right direction am I is my inertia pointed in the right direction.

[00:39:28] Or has something new change in my life is there a new interest new inputs new realities new economic situations.

[00:39:35] I have to rethink the things I’m choosing to work on and my priorities of things.

[00:39:40] And so that is sorely under under executed task I think is actually what Elon Musk basically advocates is a wonderful interview on wait but why he talks about his process for thinking of the world in this way where you have to repeatedly check where the outside world is ask are you still in the right direction with it always considering the context yeah.

[00:40:02] That is that is extremely important and it’s important that we do this.

[00:40:07] For ourselves it’s important that we do this for employers you know there’s some wisdom in this idea that you know this is the same trap that gets us into situations where we’re over optimizing right where we’re refactoring code endlessly and then that code all gets thrown away because it was on a temporary project.

[00:40:24] And then we put a bunch of energy into this thing that ends up being disposed of or otherwise devalued very important and excellent advice thank you so much Julian for your time today.

[00:40:38] Yeah thank you so much for having me Jonathan I appreciate it.

[00:40:41] Thank you for listening to today’s episode of developer T and a huge thank you to Julian Shapiro for joining me on the episode head over to julian.com and sign up for updates when Julian writes he releases these guides they’re completely free and they’re incredibly useful head over to julian.com thank you so much for listening if you heard anything useful anything valuable in today’s episode then it’s probably a pretty good bet for you to subscribe and whatever podcasting app you use because we do episodes like this one.

[00:41:11] On a regular basis three episodes a week and subscribing is the best way to make sure you don’t miss out on future valuable episodes thank you so much for listening and until next time enjoy your tea.

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