Neal O'Grady 🍉

Demand Curve

Demand Curve (YC S19) creates courses, content, and events to teach founders and marketers how to grow companies. Our weekly newsletter goes out to over 97,000 founders and marketers.

Co-Founder

GrowthPair

We've partnered up to help startups hire top-tier growth talent that fits into their budget.

Advisor

Bell Curve

Bell Curve is a paid marketing agency explicitly built for startups. 

We've worked with companies like Invoice2Go, Pilot, Segment, Microsoft, Framer, Perfect Keto, Feedly, Stacker, Techcrunch, 1build, and Ancestry.

UNIGNORABLE

People wanna buy from people—not faceless brands. Un-ignorable is a 4-week group challenge designed to help you build an audience of future buyers.

Founder + Instructor

Segment

Demand Curve and Segment had a deep partnership. We collaborated on projects where our intersection of growth and tracking expertise can help companies grow revenue.

Growth Advisor

Webflow, Inc.

- Ideated blog post topics on topics most relevant and interesting to web designers 
- Produced high-quality blog posts each week that were engaging, educational, and got people excited about web design and Webflow 
- Sourced images and supplementary material and references - Work with the founders, CMO, designer, and editor

Copywriter/Content Marketer

Lighthouse Labs

The job of a TA at a early-stage web development bootcamp was 3 main things:

1. Developing curriculum.
2. Helping students with their coding challenges.
3. Providing emotional support to extremely stressed students wondering if they've made a horrible decision dropping $10k on a career change.

Demand Curve | 93,000 founders get 3 startup growth tactics in their inbox each week. Join the Growth Newsletter below.

I'm 34 years old. I've never had a full-time job.

Not once.

No, I did not grow up rich without needing to.

My dad passed when I was 13, my mom made $26,000 CAD, and he left her with an invalid life insurance policy. He had changed it to void unless he was 65 years old or older

He did that 2 days before local laws changed where your spouse needed to approve life insurance policy changes. 

He also left her with tons of debt on credit cards she didn't know about.

So she was forced to file for bankruptcy.

We were real poor.

I managed to go to university only because she moved to Vancouver with me.

And I paid for it by aggressively applying for scholarships. 75% of it was covered.

Yet, I've never used that degree.

Since then I've:

- Taught myself programming
- Worked as a freelance developer
- Worked as a freelance copywriter
- Lived out of a backpack for 3.5 years as a digital nomad
- Started two 7-figure revenue businesses in the marketing industry

At no point was I hungry, broke, or homeless.

People think that forging your own path is risky.

What I think is risky is taking out a mortgage based on a full-time job that can be taken away from you at any moment

As a freelancer, you have numerous income streams—losing one isn't existential.

As a business owner, your job can't be taken from you. You make more if you find a way to provide more value to people at scale.

This is why I've dedicated my life to helping people start, build, and grow companies. 

My ads agency, Bell Curve (www.bellcurve.com), helps startups grow through ads—the most scalable channel there is.

Demand Curve (www.demandcurve.com) teaches founders and marketers to grow their companies and passion projects. We were accepted into Y Combinator's summer of 2019 batch.

My goal is to make entrepreneurship easier and more approachable. Because we all benefit when we each build the future we want.

Demand Curve (YC S19) creates courses, content, and events to teach founders and marketers how to grow companies. Our weekly newsletter goes out to over 60,000 founders and marketers.

Luke Matthews

Co-Founder | Lifestyle Blogger |  Content Marketer | Storyteller 

I teach you how to write with AI (and win LinkedIn)

Building in public on LinkedIn™ is risky for you. 

You aren't a 20-something Instagram model or a 33-year-old drop shipping bro bragging about 6 figures from Bali. 

You have a real business and a real reputation to uphold. 

You want to take advantage of more opportunities through visibility on social media, but you know there are privacy risks that come with that.... 

Most AI models take your data and sell it. 
Most social media platforms take your data and sell it.
Most marketers don't understand this, which can expose your company.

That's where I come in. 

I've been marketing for over 10 years on social media, built over 250k followers across all platforms, and I've ghostwritten for some of the biggest personal brands in the world. 

But beyond that, I value privacy and staying hidden. 

It takes skill to build a personal brand that not only generates revenue for your company but also remains secure and private. 

I help you build on social media and maintain your privacy using secure AI systems and world-class ghostwriting. 

Sound interesting?

Don't message here on LinkedIn.

Email me instead and use subject "𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘆"

luke@wizardofoddmarketing.com

--

Want to learn how to use AI safely?

Follow me and subscribe to my email list to learn how to use AI tools safely and securely without exposing your data and private life to the world. You can subscribe by clicking any link in my profile as they all go to my newsletter on Substack.

Founder - Lead Wizard & Ghostwriter

Linkedin & Twitter Ghostwriting Services for CEOs, Influencers, and Tech companies. 
Reach your audience with a sprinkle of magic, the power of explosive copywriting, and let the WIZARD OF odd MARKETING help make your biz a LOT  less boring.

I have been banned over 10x on LinkedIn. 

The brutal truth is the system ain’t fair…

In business and in life those willing to cater to the system (and exploit you) end up profiting from it. 

Social media has made this reality worse. 

It’s not about how skilled you are.
It’s about how skilled you can talk. 

(& it’s about who u know aka how good you are at kissing up to leaders and using errr befriending them on your climb to a seat at the table)

I decided this rat race wasn’t for me. 

So I’m playing a different game now. 

Rebuilding in the shadows. 
Learning new skills. 
Making new friends…

Friends that are hackers, rebels and the anonymous geniuses defending digital freedom…

Because look, complaining about broken systems accomplished nothing…

Action wins. 

PS Hi LinkedIn. Who’s still here?

2 posts in a week whoa 🤓

Luke M

It's easy to get 1000 likes a post (like I used too)

Here's how to be a LinkedIn influencer: 

1. Talk about LinkedIn. 
2. Be good looking and post pictures.
3. Write short, broad content. 
4. Spend all day commenting. 
5. Do this for 90 days. 

OR 

69. Pay a team to do it all for you. 

But here's the truth about this blueprint. 

You missed the window when this was possible for anyone. It's too late now on LinkedIn to do this organically. The market has changed, agencies don't work as well, organic is dying and this actually isn't the best strategy unless you want to pretend the old system still works. 

The better way? 

Cut the dopamine. Pick a niche. Speak to that niche. 
Accept less reach. Accept slower growth. 

But reach a very targetd audience. 

In summary...

You need a real skill and a real niche to focus on.

The generic LinkedIn growth expert is playing an old game to take your hard earned money by fooling you with cheap dopamine. 

You will never become them. 

You don't need a personal brand.

You just need to be an expert with a real skill and a specific niche.

PS Who bought cool AI tools for Black Friday?

I risk making moves too early. 

In early 2023 I went all in on AI writing... 

I fired my human writers and learned ChatGPT. 

Dove deep into the world of AI. 

For 6 months I shared content written by AI without telling anyone. Then I started sharing guides, tutorials and even launched an AI course to help people learn to use these tools. 

But as I started learning more I started seeing concerns. 

1. LLM writing stalled and hasn't improved in 12 months.
2. I started to question how they were training models..
3. I realized the cost for using these tools was...

Handing over your data and personal privacy.

The more I learned the more I started losing trust in the big models.

So this summer I made moves. 

I shut down my ai writing course. I started closing down accounts and cutting ai subscription tools...

The rabbithole is deep. 

But I'm now a huge believer in open sourced tools and AI tools that are privacy focused... 

So yeah I still use AI but you most likely wouldn't recognize any of the tools that I use now. 

Exiting 99% of big tech has a cost....

Personally I decided the cost was worth it. 

If you are curious to learn more about private AI and are interested in following along I shared an update on Substack. 

I'm not sharing daily or even weekly anymore as I'm focused on clients and exisiting mostly in the shadows now...

But you can click the link to go check it out. 

https://lnkd.in/gwn2VEyS

PS Hello.

Open article: Why smart people are deleting ChatGPT by substack.com

I only log in to LinkedIn on Windows. 

I use Linux for my personal data and files...

Running more than one operating system on your computer is called multi-booting. 

This summer as I began to purge myself of big tech I realized that I couldn't full exit the system yet... 

Even though I concluded that:

Using Google search is a privacy risk.

Using ChatGPT is a privacy risk.

Using Cloud AI is a risk...

Publishing content connected to your full name, actual face, phone number and home IP address is also a privacy risk…

I also realized I couldn't cut the last 1% of these data stealing big tech tools and programs...

This is where taking back your privacy requires effort.

So I decided to learn how to sandbox my work/private life online environments.

Sandboxing is when you run apps/programs in a secure, isolated framework to restrict those tools access to the rest of your systems files and resources.

Basically I wanted to figure out how to isolate tools like LinkedIn so they don't have access to my other files and life.

This takes some skill, but deleting 100% of everything just wasn't possible for me yet. 

It's a constant game of learning but I think it's worth learning how to shield your personal data and sandbox your work life, personal life and daily life environments from each other.

Otherwise you are at the mercy of data leaks, hackers, corrupt big tech and government policies…

Personally I think it’s worth the effort to learn and seperate tools, systems and resources.

What about u?

PS Yes I know Windows is getting worse... But Mac? EW

Transparency is important to OpenAI.

So this security incident shouldn't trouble u.....

It was just some irrelevant data don't worry.
Some analytics data related to ur account. 
It's VERY safe for you to share info with ChatGPT....

Rest assured this was not a breach of OpenAI’s systems. No chat, API requests, API usage data, passwords, credentials, API keys, payment details, or government IDs were compromised or exposed.....

(lol if u believe that)

Truth is peasants....

It's never been more important to sandbox your personal data and your businesses data and your social media tools access to your data...

Your personal data has never been more at risk thanks to AI.

When's the last time you audited your passwords, tools and emails?

taplio

The Battle

Neal O'Grady 🍉

Luke Matthews

Followers

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Performance ScoreLuke Matthews's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Neal O'Grady 🍉

Luke Matthews

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Luke Matthews's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreLuke Matthews's LinkedIn Performance