I asked Ryan Carson about the problem in this cartoon:

Everyone is loving building with AI.

But where are the users? The customers?

No one knows how to get them.

Ryan said to me, “I know a few ways.”

So I interviewed him about how he’s getting Claude Code to get him customers.

I’ll give you 3 tips he gave me, but first…

…Why does Ryan know about marketing?

1. Ryan got loads of PR for first company with a publicity stunt he called “Bare Naked App.” Basically, he shared everything (”got naked”) about how he was building his company.

2. He then built Treehouse, the coding school that got over 1 million students.

3. He’s currently building Untangle, AI for divorce.

4. He gets millions of views on X for his AI coding posts.

Ryan’s AI marketing tips:

He showed all this off in our interview, but I’ll sum it up for you here:

1. Personalized email drips (my fav)

The drip emails users get when they sign up to new software are generic. Ryan has Claude customize them to EACH user.

2. Automated marketing insights

Ryan set up a cron job that analyzes key marketing data (GA4, etc) and tells him what to improve. It analyzes his analytics better than he does.

3. Customer development

Claude found users who clicked multiple drip emails, but didn't start a trial. Then it emailed them to book a Zoom with him so he could learn from them.

Want more?

It’s on the podcast feed, but I think you should check out the YouTube channel because he shows a lot of what he’s teaching.

~ andrew

PS I have to show you how our property looks after this week’s snow in Austin, TX. Did you have rough weather this week?