The books and essays this one leans on, and what to take from each.
The Lean StartupEric Ries, 2011The three engines of growth, sticky, viral and paid, and the advice to tune one at a time.
"Growth Loops are the New Funnels"Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, Kevin Kwok, Andrew Chen, Reforge, 2018The case for drawing growth as loops, where each cycle's output becomes the next cycle's input.
"Lessons Learned: Viral Marketing"David Skok, For EntrepreneursThe viral growth formula with cycle time, used in Loop Math.
The Cold Start ProblemAndrew Chen, 2021Atomic networks, the hard side, and how networks tip, scale and stall.
Hacking GrowthSean Ellis and Morgan Brown, 2017How growth teams find the moment a product clicks and test quickly around it; Ellis worked with Dropbox early.
Viral LoopAdam L. Penenberg, 2009Early histories of companies that grew through their users, including PayPal and eBay.
HookedNir Eyal, 2014Trigger, action, variable reward, investment: the habit loop inside a customer that feeds the loop between customers.
Thinking in SystemsDonella Meadows, 2008Reinforcing and balancing loops, stocks, flows and delays.
The Fifth DisciplinePeter Senge, 1990Limits to growth and the other patterns that stall a loop.
Turning the FlywheelJim Collins, 2019How to write your own flywheel, and why the order of its parts matters.
InfluenceRobert Cialdini, 1984Reciprocity, social proof and scarcity: the psychology inside every double-sided reward and giveaway.
ContagiousJonah Berger, 2013Why some things get talked about, and how to design for it.
Zero to OnePeter Thiel with Blake Masters, 2014Distribution as part of the product, from someone who ran PayPal's loop.
BlitzscalingReid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, 2018Growth when speed matters most, with PayPal and eBay from the inside.
The ContrarianMax Chafkin, 2021The source used here for PayPal's early bonus amounts and user counts.
The PayPal WarsEric M. Jackson, 2004An insider's history of PayPal's fight with eBay and fraud.
What most of these books leave out is what this one tried to add: loops that ship physical goods with margins, rewards that fall under sweepstakes and consumer law, and proof from a holdout rather than a dashboard.