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Every edition of The Growth Newsletter.
Newsletters — page 1 of 11
Narrow to grow, take-back pricing, change the axis.Greetings humans, A quick introduction for all you new readers: We’re Demand Curve, a growth agency for startups. 43 unicorns later, almost everything in the Growth Newsletter comes out of the work we
Onboarding forms, funding paid tests, and backing your incumbent into a corner.Hey everyone, The Growth Program is 50% off through Tuesday. We launched Growth Program 2.0 this time last year, and nearly 1,000 startups have come through it since. For the anniversary, we’re discou
Vitamins vs painkillers, 500K AI citations, and end your ads on emotion.Hey Friends, One of the most common (and demoralizing) growth problems we see founders run into? Watching their product lose to a worse one. Not a cheaper one or a better-funded one. Somehow they’re j
How I got 900k+ impressions from just 10 social posts.Greetings loyal readers, If you've been reading for a while, you'll recognize Kevin DePopas. He led growth for Demand Curve in 2025 and owned this newsletter through that period. He still works closel
The visuals that belong on your landing page, how to tell whether your differentiator will last, and why pricing low can leave you unable to afford customers.Howdy y'all, It’s Thursday, and now that the newsletter is out, I’m ready for the weekend. I’m backpacking the four pass loop near Maroon Bells, and I hear it’s peak aspen season. How ridiculous is th
Trade a trial extension for a review, spot where AI video crosses the line, and turn discounts into creditsHey folks, As marketers, we are a strange audience. Something lands in my inbox and I'm grading the quality of the marketing before I've finished reading. So this week we're showing our grades. Here a
Avoid shrinkflation, what to do when building in public stops working, and how to make your product a ritual.Greetings, friends. Over the weekend I went to a drive-in, admittedly for the first time in my adult life, to see the new Spider-Man. I went in without many expectations. But it blew me away. Felt lik
How to increase desire, why Bezos picked books, exclude your refunders.Hey y'all, Before we dive in, some exciting news: we're hiring. The role? Growth Strategist (Paid Marketing). Who? A paid marketing expert who designs engines, not just campaigns. With a long track re
Unoptimized marketing, onboarding friction, and AI searchHowdy folks, The more I write about marketing, the more I notice the sharp, sticky stuff tends to live at the edges. When everyone's zigging, it's worth considering the zag. Which is exactly our first
We've got some updatesWhat’s up everyone! As Nick teed up last week, some changes are coming to the newsletter. Here's one we think long-time subscribers will be particularly stoked about: we're bringing back the OG format
How breakout companies actually pull awayHey y'all! Nick here. Longtime readers might recognize me. I used to run DC's content back in the day. I did my own thing for a while, and took a break to ride a bike across New Zealand (a shout to al
Your ad account isn't the problem you think it isHey y'all, Justin here. I've somehow managed to get sick twice in the last 2 months (idk about you, but something about getting sick in the summer just doesn't sit right with me). Now that my head's c
Why better products keep losingYour conversion rates, your sales cycle, even your retention: all of them sit downstream of one asset most startups neglect. Their story. A quick test. Put your homepage next to your closest competito
Opinionated defaults, loosely heldHappy Tuesday! Last week we broke down the activation gap, and the lightbulb moment: the first real win that flips a new user from skeptical to hooked. A bunch of you replied asking us to go deeper on
The activation gapEvery founder has a number they check too often. For many, it's signups. You refresh the dashboard, it's up since this morning, and a bit of dopamine goes off in your brain: people want our product, t
The AI visibility flywheelHappy Thursday! Welcome to the third and final edition of our AI ads series. The first two covered the fundamentals of ChatGPT Ads: an intro to the channel, the unique mechanics powering it, and a ste
The Paid Marketing ParadoxThere are two stories about paid media going around right now. Story one: AI automated it all, so it's basically a commodity now. Push a button, the machine does the rest. Budgets get cut, talented ma
Your quickstart guide to ChatGPT AdsWhen you first land in the ChatGPT Ads platform, it feels very familiar. The UI, settings, etc. aren't too different than what you're used to on Meta or Google. But under the hood, its mechanics are v
The recommendation layerChatGPT Ads is brand-spanking new, but maybe you've already set up a campaign or two. How's it going? Let me guess…basically zero clicks? You need to remember that ChatGPT Ads is a recommendation laye
Design's New Floor and EdgeToday, you can boot up any AI builder (Claude Code, Lovable, Replit Agent 4) and ask for a beautiful landing page. You'll get something clean, minimal, and nobody's gonna call it ugly. But there's a s
Why AI ignores your brandAbout 70% of the traffic AI sends to your website doesn't carry a referrer header. Which means GA4 has no idea ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini was involved. The session shows up as "direct," making it real
AI isn't built for marketingEveryone's talking about AI slop. You've seen the complaints. LinkedIn posts about how everything sounds the same, think pieces about the death of authenticity, conference panels where marketers solem
How to overtake incumbents in AI search (Part 2 of 3... again)Happy Friday! Last month, we went deep on AI search with a 3-part series written by Zach Boyette, the Managing Partner of our new agency, Saturation. Based on all the feedback we've gotten, it sounds
The Solo Founder EraThere's a part of the AI story that's hard to celebrate. Companies using it as a justification to flatten headcount. But there's a far more encouraging trend happening in parallel: AI is making it pos
AI isn't replacing marketers. But it is solving the first growth hire problem for startups."Who should I hire as my first growth lead?" Despite being one of the most common questions we get at Demand Curve, and despite being something pretty much all founders eventually have to solve, it re
Choose your lifecycle stack with the Chef ModelAI-native lifecycle platforms are multiplying. Everyone’s being told to upgrade. Most teams have no idea what they actually need. Drew Price does. He was Grammarly's original lifecycle lead, where he
How to engineer your AI search flywheelWelcome to the third and final edition of our AI search series. In Part 1, we made the case that AI search is the first truly disruptive distribution platform we’ve seen in well over a decade. In Part
Build vs. buy: marketer's editionA new class of marketer is building their own tools with AI. Bespoke software tailored to exactly how they work. No engineering team required. Jonathan Martinez, founder of GrowthPair and longtime DC
How to overtake incumbents in AI search (Part 2 of 3)Last week, we made the case that AI search is the first truly disruptive distribution platform since mobile. And that the zero-sum game of SEO is giving way to something startups can actually win. Thi
How to overtake incumbents in AI search (Part 1 of 3)Truly disruptive distribution platforms come along maybe twice in a generation. The web. Then mobile. That's the list for the last 30 years. When they arrive, the slate gets wiped clean. Incumbent moa