Julian Shapiro (00:00): Why do good ideas arrive after the bad ideas are empty? It's because when you've gone through a bunch of bad ideas, your brain, your mind starts reflexively identifying what elements are causing the badness. Then it becomes way better at avoiding those bad elements and you become way better at pattern matching the novel ideas with way greater intuition. Most creators are resisting their bad ideas. If you sat down, scribbled a few thoughts in a blank document and just walked away because you weren't struck with gold, then you never actually finished the creative process. There's no way you would've come up with gold. Lenny (00:37): Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. I interview world class product leaders, and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies today. My guest is Julian Shapiro. I actually spend a bunch of time introducing the wondrous Julian at the beginning of the episode. Instead, let me just share some of the things that we talk about. We get into a framework he calls product-led acquisition, which is work that has come out of his working with thousands of companies, helping to figure out their growth strategies. Lenny (01:10): We get into ways to increase your product's retention. Then we talk a lot about writing, the importance of novelty in your writing, how to choose a topic when you plan to write, and then a framework that Julian calls the Creativity Faucet. Julian is such a fascinating human, and I'm really excited to bring you this episode. With that, I bring you Julian Shapiro. I'm excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey, John. John Cutler (01:37): Hey, Lenny. Excited to be here. Lenny (01:39): John, give us a behind the scenes at Amplitude. When most people think of Amplitude, they think of product analytics. But now you'...