Introduction

Welcome to the Demand Curve growth course!

We lead growth sessions at Y Combinator. We’ve taken clients from no revenue to millions in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). We’ve turned businesses around and gotten them to their next round of funding.

This course is geared towards giving you our actionable tactics to apply to your business. Immediately.

Course Overview

As you go through the course, you’ll be testing different growth tactics on your business. Everything from rewriting landing pages, to running ads, to implementing a referral program.

It’s extremely important that you complete the Growth Strategy (Day 1) module first. Otherwise, you’re going to waste many days going down the wrong path.

Here’s how it’s going to work.

Part 1: Growth Strategy & Onboarding

Before we try to get more people to your site, we have to set up the foundation. This means making sure your site converts well — and being intelligent about what we try first.

Sure, you could run Facebook ads. Or you could sponsor an email newsletter. Or you could auto-follow people on Twitter. There are a lot of shiny objects.

How do you know what’s most likely to work?

We’ll pull from our experience testing 20+ channels. Running over 10,000 ads. And writing punchy copy like this.

You’ll combine that knowledge with the specifics of your business to end up with a prioritized to-do list of what to start with.

Then, we make sure your onboarding experience is ironclad. This means you fix up your website so that people actually purchase once they get to it.

Otherwise, you’re going to waste money on people who show up and immediately leave.

Part 2: Ad Copy and Creation

If it applies to your strategy, we’ll walk you through how to write copy (the text in ads), and make creatives (the actual ad images and videos people see) — using the practices that we know to work best across different channels.

Part 3: Acquisition Channels

We’ll give you a menu of the major channels that are most likely to work for your business. You’ll choose which to work on first based on your own own priorities.

Each channel has its own module, which covers:

• Readings

• Checklists

• Templates

• Example documents based on real client work

• Short exercises

• A final project

We’ll use the ads you made in part 2 to upload them to places like Facebook and Instagram.

Part 4: Conversion

We'll take a more data-driven approach to see where people are getting stuck in your funnel. Then, we'll brainstorm fixes and intelligently prioritize them.

How to take this course

The project is the most important part of each module. It's where you actually do the impactful work. It’s not just practice or more learning; it’s literally you executing your growth strategy. It’s you setting up channels. Building tangible things. Its the WHOLE point of the course.

Often, course projects are a waste of time. Not ours.

If you blow through the readings and projects without taking them seriously, you will suffer great pain and money-losings.

Do the readings first, then do the project. Consult the “Additional Resources” sections afterwards.

Our curriculum is built so that you can get blocked on one module, but try others at the same time. For example, you might send out your first batch of cold emails, but have to wait a few days for a response. You can spend that time setting up and running Facebook ads.

Getting Feedback (Full Program Only)

If you're in our full program, you should have received an email with information on how to submit projects for feedback.

Instructors will be reviewing your projects, ads, landing pages, emails, and more. Our team has seen what works (and what doesn’t) for a variety of businesses, both from students and in our agency arm.

When submit a project, you'll get feedback within two to three business days.

When you get to the part of a project that says “Demand Curve Review” — do not skip it. This is where a ton of the course’s value comes from.

WikiForum

You should also have received an invite to our WikiForum; that's where you can ask questions specific to your business.

If something in the course is unclear or you get stuck, ask us in the WikiForum. We want you moving smoothly through the course.

Our team will post answers and solutions in there. The most common answers make it into the curriculum.

Other founders and growth marketers are going through the course and hitting the same problems you are - brainstorm with them! Bounce tactics off the community. They'll think of things we won't.

Enough talk! Let's start strategizing.