YouTube
A video platform for user-generated and professional video, owned by Google.
Built With Science uses YouTube, with about 3 million subscribers, as its main channel. The launch brought a spike, and older videos still deliver a steady monthly number of trials. Story videos beat broad educational ones, and clicks are tracked per video. Lesson: track each video's clicks, favor story-driven pitches, and build ad engines that don't depend on the founder-influencer.
- Reach more people
- Fewer trial activations
- Show a user transforming with app
- More trial activations
Stories win; next: story tied to pitch, soft CTAs
From Built With Science click tracking
What was said about YouTube
Older YouTube videos keep sending a steady stream of trials. The channel has about 3 million subscribers. It gave Built With Science a spike of trials at launch, and older videos now bring in a steady monthly number of trials.
The sources give no trial counts for either the launch spike or the monthly baseline.
Story videos beat broad educational ones at driving trials, and click tracking shows it. Built With Science tracks nearly every click from YouTube videos and description links, so it can see which videos produce trials. Broad educational videos reach more people but get fewer trial activations than stories of a user transforming with the app.
The team now plans content that ties a story into the product pitch, with soft mid-video CTAs. Their framing: "how can we tell a story that seamlessly ties into the product pitch".
Don't let growth depend on one founder's YouTube channel. To solve what they call the bus problem, Built With Science runs Meta ads built on B-roll videos, testimonials and AI-made statics instead of Jeremy. His time stays on long-form YouTube, which they judge the highest-ROI activity.
They also use clippers on Reels and TikTok, and the viral hooks that emerge there inform future videos. Quote: "we wanted to kind of solve the bus problem where everything was reliant on Jeremy's YouTube channel".
Google Part II: Alphabet
Bought for $1.65B in stock in 2006 while losing about $1B a year on $30M revenue. It now earns over $50B with about $8B operating income, after sharing about half of ad revenue with creators.
Older YouTube videos keep sending a steady stream of trials. The channel has about 3 million subscribers. It gave Built With Science a spike of trials at launch, and older videos now bring in a steady monthly number of trials.
The sources give no trial counts for either the launch spike or the monthly baseline.
Story videos beat broad educational ones at driving trials, and click tracking shows it. Built With Science tracks nearly every click from YouTube videos and description links, so it can see which videos produce trials. Broad educational videos reach more people but get fewer trial activations than stories of a user transforming with the app.
The team now plans content that ties a story into the product pitch, with soft mid-video CTAs. Their framing: "how can we tell a story that seamlessly ties into the product pitch".
Don't let growth depend on one founder's YouTube channel. To solve what they call the bus problem, Built With Science runs Meta ads built on B-roll videos, testimonials and AI-made statics instead of Jeremy. His time stays on long-form YouTube, which they judge the highest-ROI activity.
They also use clippers on Reels and TikTok, and the viral hooks that emerge there inform future videos. Quote: "we wanted to kind of solve the bus problem where everything was reliant on Jeremy's YouTube channel".
Crafting a compelling product vision | Ebi Atawodi (YouTube, Netflix, Uber)
Ebi leads Creator Experience here. Shorts was framed as a vision story: polished hour-long content made people stop creating, then 60-second videos let anyone express themselves again. A strategy session used blank app store panels, and each PM keeps a living top 10 problems doc.
Why 90% of their paid traffic goes to a quiz, not the App Store
The channel has about 3 million subscribers, which gave a launch spike and now a steady monthly number of trials from older videos. Story videos get more trials than broad educational ones, and each video's clicks are tracked.
The ultimate guide to paid growth | Timothy Davis (Shopify)
Davis is most bullish on video, so add YouTube third if you have video creative and a refresh flywheel. Lead with emotion, such as comedy or happiness.
Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact | Bangaly Kaba (YT, IG, FB)
Bangaly now leads product there. His team moved from 60% execution to 80 to 85% as it learned, found a new Gmail account gives a much worse search experience, and mapped the live funnel before launching paid virtual goods.
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Its core action turned out to be subscribing, not watching, because it ties creators and viewers to the platform and serves both sides. Its North Star is subscribers.
Monetizing passions, scaling marketplaces, and stories from a creator economy vet | Camille Hearst
Hearst worked there as a product marketing manager and helped write 2010 creator playbooks. Consistent, quality output was top advice then and still is.
The science of product, big bets, and how AI is impacting the future of music | Gustav Söderström
Its home is a single-item discovery feed and users do not rage about it, unlike apps that make you dig through a library to resume. Board member Shishir Mehrotra used the 10% planning rule there.
An inside look at how Figma builds product | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma)
Yuhki led its iOS app having never used an iPhone before day one. Its PM style, where one PM could not specify everything, made shared understanding of the problem the only way to scale.
App Store Optimization in 2022: Key Google Play Changes
Google Play preview videos live on YouTube, so titles, descriptions and tags can be optimized for search. Using the app title as the video title and competitor names as tags is being tested to see if it lifts Google Play rank.
Licensing, ASO & Ad Monetization with David Cremades
Recommended for game promotion because videos stay live and searchable, so a roughly $2,000 influencer video still drove downloads over a year later. It reaches gamers better than Instagram, where posts are quickly replaced.
How to Build a Media Empire From Apps
Repeated app questions became YouTube videos, such as one video answering the gym question after the 420th ask. A platform promoting your video brings far more than a solo creator could, and he starts keyword research from his own creativity and then the Google Keyword tool.
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