5.2

Growth Loops

A model of acquisition in which the output of each cycle becomes the input of the next, as opposed to a funnel refilled from outside.

Balfour, Winters, Kwok & Chen, Reforge (2018)

What it does

A funnel is linear and must be refilled from outside; a loop feeds its own input, so growth compounds. Shows where compounding actually exists in a business.

When it breaks

Not every business has a loop. Forcing one produces a north-star metric that measures the wrong thing.

Case

Pinterest is the essay's worked example: Casey Winters, who ran it, describes making user boards indexable so Google users became Pinterest users who created more boards. That was the company's primary avenue for new users. Pinterest went from 40M monthly actives when he joined to 200M+ when he left; the growth is company-level, not SEO-attributed.

First Round Review · building content loops ↗
Funnel Buy the input Costs money Customers Refill from outside Loop Users Boards Search Free input Output feeds input
Growth Loops · 5.2

In the wild

Unchecked · not part of the tier

What people have written about this tool in the last twelve months. A machine found these and nobody has read them. Everything above this line was checked by hand.

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