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 — 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 ↗Diagram — not yet drawn
A funnel and a loop side by side, with the funnel's external refill drawn as an arrow costing money and the loop's as an arrow costing nothing.
In the wild
Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment
What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.
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