About | Julian Shapiro

Contact

Hey! Feel free to tweet me: @Julian. Due to limited bandwidth, I don't answer handbook questions nor do I share removed content.

Writing

I use this site to deconstruct how things work:

I pick a skill I want to be good at.
I research and experiment to uncover its principles. I question the assumptions behind its conventional teaching.
"The difference between knowledge and wisdom is experience,” so I get my hands dirty and experiment.
I rewrite until I have a handbook that is interesting, concise, and effective.
I post updates to my Newsletter along the way.
I release the handbook for free. Each takes around 500 hours. They're read by over one million people every year.

You can read the handbooks, listen to the podcast, or subscribe to my newsletter.

Career

I spend most of my time investing in startups via Julian.capital.

Previously, I founded Demand Curve, a Y Combinator startup that grows other companies: we've trained thousands of companies in growth. I also wrote TechCrunch's marketing column.

Before investing and growth, I was an engineer. I created Velocity, an animation engine used by Samsung, Uber, WhatsApp, and thousands more.

Velocity was awarded the Stripe Open Source Grant. I was interviewed about my work on Forbes.