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18 Comments

Feedback on growth courses

Hey people,

We are considering taking a marketing / growth course to better define a growth strategy for Mailbrew.

Probably going with Demand Curve.

At $4k it is quite expensive. Wondering if you had any feedback before we pull the trigger.

  1. 1

    Hey @frankdilo,

    Circling back 6 months later - curious if you landed on one particular course or another? Trying to decide between Reforge or Demand Curve.

    Thanks,
    Sam

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      Neither of those. Got too busy building product and trying new ideas to follow a course. Also did our first growth hire, which put us in the right mindset.

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        Got it - thanks for replying! Do you have a post anywhere which you could share what worked / what didn't and how you went about experimenting?

        Thank you! 🙏

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    Hey Francesco, I don’t know about DC specifically but I am a growth hacker and I suggest you grab Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. It’ll teach you the Bullseye method which is what I practice. He also wrote a great summary article on Medium: https://bookshlf.com/post/pql6xj. There are no silver bullets. You need to find underutilized channels for your niche and underutilized strategy in already established channels. The way to do this is with a testing methodology. Good luck!

  3. 1

    Hey @frankdilo,

    Never tried Demand Curve but I've mapped out pretty much all of them and yes, many are expensive.

    I'd love for you to join my free (for now) growth course which I'm calling Growth Marketing The Rest Of Us. Two minute preview of today's session: https://www.loom.com/share/0ee225fa44734c6fa8a710d75f995748

    The short story behind my course is that I've led growth marketing (does not include product growth stuff) at two Series C backed startups with 7 figure budgets and 10 person marketing teams. I started running these weekly sessions to...

    • Codify what I've learned over the past several years
    • Share it with others
    • Test my aspirational hypothesis which is that indies, bootstrappers, and pretty much any owner-run business can apply most of the mental models that "sophisticated" venture-backed startups use to grow.

    So, can't make any guarantees here... but all I'm asking for in return is for you to be engaged and provide feedback. Here's the link to apply https://etanefrati.typeform.com/c/sJUAUsnP.

    Good luck with whatever you decide!
    Etan

  4. 1

    Hey Francesco,

    I took the Reforge Growth Series course earlier this year and it was phenomenal. It was created by the former VP of Growth at HubSpot and they bring guest speakers (all Growth folks from startups and growth-stage companies) as well. The material was excellent and I was able to apply it to my work.

    Like the courses you've cited, this one is expensive: it was over US$3K if I recall correctly. What kinds of reviews have you seen for Demand Curve and other courses?

    1. 1

      Hey Stephanie, thanks for recommending Reforge.

      Seems like a great course, I heard a podcast with its founder on it and he had some great advice.

      It seems to be targeted to people in growth-related roles (not founders like myself), they even explicitly say so in their landing.

      This seems crazy, I am not going to ask permission or "apply" in order to have the "privilege" to hand them $3k 😬

      1. 1

        I hear you! I think they ask for folks to apply to ensure they get an engaged cohort of people. They want people who are going to put in the time to learn the material vs people who will fork over $3K just to say they took the class but weren't active on it. I do hope they offer courses for founders soon, though. Good luck!

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      5 months in, growth has slowed down. Currently sitting at $2.5k MRR.

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        I see a lot of that.
        Is it Covid related do you think or just your marketing efforts?

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          Nothing to do with COVID, just the usual growth struggles most startups see

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            Exactly what I see repeatedly. Why I always advocate a strategy and framework that wraps around all the 1000s of potential tactics that enable long-term and sustained growth. Yes, more work...but necessary.

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    I think it's super expensive, most of the hacks in the course can be learned online free of cost. Personally I would never opt for this course.

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      Yeah, probably.

      Creating a strategy from all the articles and different bits and pieces is like trying to get a University degree watching YouTube videos.

      I am looking for a more structured approach.

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        I suggest pick one channel like Facebook ads at one time, spend 1-2 weeks on it. Learn all stuff about fb ads and then move to SEO. Pick one, learn all hacks, best practices, optimization and then move to next.

        If $4K is not good amount for you, then you can pay for the course as well.

        I’m bootstrapper so always try to save as much as money I can and in same way try to learn as much as I can at my end

        I hope this will help

  6. 1

    Why do you want to go with Demand Curve's? I don't personally know them, but why are you considering other options? Is price the only concern? Have you read great reviews otherwise? Do you know of people who have done their course? What's their experience?

    1. 1

      Why do you want to go with Demand Curve's?

      They seem like the most comprehensive course. The guy that founded it also has a solid reputation in the space, with his extremely high quality series on growth.

      I don't personally know them, but why are you considering other options? Is price the only concern?

      Nope. Price for these kind of courses seems to be in that range. Was trying to gather feedback here.

      At our stage it's a big investment though.

      Have you read great reviews otherwise? Do you know of people who have done their course? What's their experience?

      That's the point of this question I posted on IH 😂

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