Appendix C

SOURCES

Every external source, by chapter. Web sources were read in September 2026.

PayPal (chapters 5 and 6)

PayPal, Inc. Form S-1, 2001. Operating data, selected financial data, risk factors.
PayPal, Inc. Registration statement, 2002. Accounts, marketing cost per new account, auction share, losses.
Max Chafkin. The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. 2021, pp. 59–60.
Peter Thiel with Blake Masters. Zero to One. 2014.

Dropbox (chapters 7 and 8)

Drew Houston. "Dropbox: Startup Lessons Learned." April 2010.
Dropbox, Inc. Form S-1/A. March 2018.
Dropbox Help Center. "How much free referral space can I earn?"

Whatnot (chapters 9 to 11)

Whatnot Help Center: Giveaways; Buyer Appreciation Giveaways; Buyer Referral Program.
Whatnot. 2026 State of Live Selling report, as covered by Tubefilter (January 2026), cllct and Value Added Resource.
TechCrunch, March 2021. Andreessen Horowitz, "Investing in Whatnot," March 2021.
NEA, "Marketplace Building Spotlight," September 2023. Masters of Scale, November 2025.
Contrary Research, Whatnot. Business of Fashion, October 2025. Quartz, August 2026. Fortune, August 2026.

Binance (chapters 12, 13 and 23)

Bloomberg. "How a Billionaire Crypto King Built the No. 1 Exchange in Just 8 Months." March 28, 2018.
Binance: tiered fees, July 2018; BitTorrent sale results, January 2019; referral program; Learn and Earn; Binance Angels; 250 million users.
US Department of Justice. "Binance and CEO Plead Guilty to Federal Charges in $4B Resolution." November 21, 2023.

The gallery (chapter 21)

Adam L. Penenberg. Viral Loop. 2009. Excerpt, TechCrunch, October 2009.
Jeff Raider. "How to Gather 100,000 Emails in One Week." July 2014.
Tyler Denk. "How Morning Brew's referral program built an audience of 1.5 million subscribers." Digiday.

Frameworks (chapters 3 and 4)

Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, Kevin Kwok, Andrew Chen. "Growth Loops are the New Funnels." Reforge, 2018.
David Skok. "Lessons Learned: Viral Marketing." For Entrepreneurs.
The books on The Shelf.

OVRLND (chapters 14 to 20, 22)

My own 2026 plans and pulls for OVRLND: the growth plan and scoreboard, the 45-day flow plan, the Bronco final-month strategy and KPI scorecard, and the SR5 giveaway plan. Figures are Klaviyo- or Recharge-recorded, or forecasts where labeled.

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Written by Andrew Lauchner, a growth and retention operator for consumer brands. The paid work is one ninety-day Sprint.

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