1/ Growth Loops are the new funnels - some thoughts by myself, @onecaseman, @kevinakwok, and @andrewchen. reforge.com/blog/growth-lo…
2/ The MOST important question your team should be able to answer is: "How does your product grow?" This seems like a simple question, but you'll typically find everyone on your team has a different and/or incomplete answer...
3/ This is a really big problem. If everyone has a different/incomplete picture of how the product grows, then you can't have apples to apples discussions about priorities, metrics, goals, or strategy. This leads to people moving in opposite directions.
4/ The dominant framework to answer this question has been the AARRR funnel framework created by @davemcclure. It helped me and millions of others level up their game, but we've learned a lot about how the fastest companies grow since its creation..
5/ The biggest thing we've learned is that a funnel is too micro of a view. It helps explain a specific step within a Growth Loop, but misses the larger picture of the loop itself. Over applied at the company level, funnels commonly lead to three problems...
6/ One: Funnels can create strategic silos. Thinking about and forming product strategy, marketing strategy, and monetization strategy completely separate from each other. This doesn't work due to Product Channel Fit and Channel Model fit - brianbalfour.com/essays/product…
7/ Two: Funnels commonly create functional silos where marketing owns acquisition, product owns retention, etc. Each given goals and they end up optimizing at the expense of each other.
8/ Three: Funnels create linear growth. Put more in at the top, get more out at the bottom. This means we have to keep putting more into the top to get more at the bottom. More money, more people, more tactics, more channels, more, more, more. This is unsustainable.
9/ "Compound interest is man's greatest invention." - Einstein. Einstein was a growth expert and he didn't even know it :)
10/ The fastest growing products are better represented as a system of loops, not funnels. Loops are closed systems where the inputs through some process generates more of an output that can be reinvested in the input. 
11/ There are growth loops that serve different value creation including new users, returning users, defensibility, or efficiency. In our research for the Growth Models program (reforge.com/growth-modelin…) we've identified 20+ types of loops. A couple examples...
14/ The reason loops are so powerful is that the generate compounding growth. Loops force you to understand how you reinvest the output of one cycle into the next cycle....
15/ The second reason loops are so powerful - they combine how your product, channel, and monetization model work together in a single system rather than silos. As a result they end up being more specific to your product and company making them harder for others to replicate....
16/ When you look at things through the Loop framework you start to approach growth from a different perspective, you start making investment decisions differently, and you organize/goal teams differently...
17/ More about Growth Loops here: reforge.com/blog/growth-lo… Or do a really deep dive with us here: reforge.com/growth-modelin…
