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Neal O'Grady, Julian Shapiro, Justin Setzer, and Asher King-Abramson co-founded Bell Curve (a growth agency) in 2016 and Demand Curve (a startup growth program) shortly after. The newsletter is the public face of both. They've worked with companies like Microsoft, Ancestry, Segment, Tumblr, and Pilot.The format is the secret. Most growth newsletters are 1,500 words of context for 200 words of advice. Demand Curve flips that. Three tactics per issue, twice a week, written by someone who's tested them on a paying client. You can read the whole thing in 4 minutes.Almost all the growth has been word of mouth. Neal occasionally writes about that journey on his personal Substack, and the meta-analysis is itself a good lesson in content distribution.
What lands in your inbox.
Three growth tactics per issue, twice a week
Teardowns of ad creative, landing pages, and signup flows
Founder Q&As pulled from the Demand Curve startup network
Coverage that skews paid acquisition, conversion, and email
A paid Slack community for course alumni
Notable editions
How we grew Demand Curve to 62k subscribers
Neal's reflective post from issue 100. The most useful content marketing case study on his archive.
Weekly Growth Newsletter (250+ issues)
The flagship format. Pick any issue, you'll learn something.
Bell Curve client teardowns
Recurring case studies from agency engagements with companies like Pilot and Segment.
The honest take
What We Love
- Tactic density per issue is genuinely high
- Format respects 4 minutes of your time
- Examples come from real paying-client work
- The free tier is plenty. Paid mainly buys community.
Watch Out For
- Skews early-stage and consumer or SMB
- Less useful if your motion is sales-led enterprise
- Twice-a-week cadence adds up. Use an inbox rule.
