The growth playbook that works in 2025.

I’ve had quite a few conversations recently about growth strategy in an AI world.

A startup I know is dumping money into social and paid media and watching conversions struggle. A mid-sized SaaS team we work with has a great platform and a slow sales pipeline. They’re both running the old playbook, which is:

• Sales folks pounding pavement, messaging folks, trying to schedule meetings, and hoping for the best.

• Marketing folks optimizing campaigns, posting on social, creating blog posts to drive SEO, running ads, and crossing fingers.

This playbook isn’t working as effectively anymore.

How AI is changing the sales & marketing playbook

In an AI world, a great product or service isn’t enough. A differentiated experience + fast time to value + a virtuous cycle of distribution (i.e., loops that help you consistently acquire, activate, monetize, and retain customers) is key to sustainable growth and success.

AI has done 3 pretty big things to growth:

1. It’s making content cheap to create.. which means that everyone can make more.. which means attention is incredibly hard to get.

2. It’s making discovery more reliant on AI deciding to show customers your stuff.

3. It’s compressing product advantage. The moat is now becoming how you reach your customers and how quickly you can get them to value.

Because of these 3 things, I CAN’T STOP thinking about how to create growth loops in the AI era. A growth loop is basically when a customer does something that helps you get another customer, creating compounding growth. This used to be something that mostly consumer-focused companies focused on, but now it’s critical for B2B service companies too.

Loops beat funnels

I recently watched Elena Verna’s recent talk at ProductCon (Head of Growth at Lovable, formerly Dropbox). She shared this simple slide in her talk that does a good job of showing the essence of a growth loop:

A sales or marketing funnel moves someone through a sequence once, while loops reinvest what one customer creates into the next customer. Loops create a virtuous cycle of attention and growth and has 3 parts:

• Input: A new or returning customer/user.

• Action: The step that creates distributable value (e.g., share, invite, publish, export, automate).

• Output: A unit that is valuable to another person on its own and creates reinvestment (i.e., they become a customer) with a frictionless path for that output to recruit the next input (i.e., it gets a 3rd customer) and the cycle continues.

The four C’s of growth

There are four key elements of a strong growth system that you’ll need to think about when designing a great growth loop: customer, contrast, channel, conversion.

1. Customer

Most teams think of their customer as a set of demographics or a market.. not an actual person. Until you know exactly who you’re aiming for (a real person with behaviors, preferences, needs, intents.. not just a set of data), it’s going to be really hard to figure out how to create an effective growth loop that works.

It’s important to establish who your ICP is (Ideal Customer Profile) so that you can speak to them directly. Some things to consider when defining growth loops for your ICP:

• What are they ultimately trying to accomplish?

• What are the events or triggers that makes your product/service/solution urgent to them?

• Who are you intentionally not going after and why (i.e., who’s your “anti-ICP”)?

• What are they using or doing today and what frustrates them (i.e., what could cause them to switch to your product/service)?

2. Contrast

People change when staying the same still feels riskier or costs them more than moving. Contrast is what creates that moment. You need to make it obvious to choose you by contrasting things like:

• What are the trade offs & benefits? (ex. a breakdown of the pros/cons or a demo of how your product/service will help them solve their problem)

• How do you stack up against competitors? (ex. a comparison table)

• How much can they make or save by switching? (ex. a calculator or quote tool that uses their own inputs)

• What will they miss out on if they stay where they are?

3. Channel

The classic mix of organic and paid traffic is really fragile right now because of AI. Focus on the channels where you’re able to build trust with your ICP more easily. I’d suggest picking one primary channel, focusing on it for 90 days, and creating a ton of value for your ICP. Some ways to do this:

• Be a real person with a clear point of view (ex. founder-led content)

• Be the nexus of your community with events, podcasts, and content that creates gravity (i.e., a pull, not a push).

• Build useful tools, templates, and playbooks that are easy to share (i.e., lead magnets).

• Find a company in an adjacent space that already owns your ICP’s attention and form a mutually beneficial referral partnership.

4. Conversion

Every action should lead to a next step. Spend a lot of time removing friction and increasing clarity for your ICP. Also, really focus on how the action creates immediate value for the customer and creates a loop that acquires or attracts another customer.

Five types of loops that are working right now

There’s a lot of testing and iteration around growth loops at the moment and it’s been interesting to watch how companies are getting creative. Here are five that stand out:

1. Collaborative loops: One person invites others to finish the job (ex. sharing docs, projects, canvases, workflows).

2. Result-sharing loops: The output is portable and attractive (ex. sharing reports, clips, summaries, prototypes).

3. Template loops: Each successful use can be saved as a template and published or shared with attribution to whoever created it.

4. Partner loops: Integrations that send your output into other partner tools/platforms/products where your ICP already lives.

5. Sales assist loops: AI assembles a tailored artifact from a prospect’s data, which is shared with them. It gets forwarded to others and creates more customers.

Some other example loops

• A newsletter subscribe form that immediately shares valuable resources after subscribing, makes it easy to share with others, and enrolls them in an email sequence that nurtures the relationship.

• An automated email follow up that showcases a recent win and invites the next step (e.g., sharing with someone else).

• A user shares a file that recipients can view without any kind of login, data, or pay wall. The product is useful to someone else at first glance and they share with others, which is the growth engine.

• The user shares the link with a teammate who customizes and publishes. Each publish can be saved as a template that lives in a public gallery, which pulls in more users.

Launching your 1st loop

Step 1: Start by creating clarity

• Talk to your customer and use their input to define/refine your ICP.

• Map the moments that matter along their journey (i.e., where are the biggest opportunities to repeatably create value for them?).

Step 2: Build & launch the engine

• Make creation and sharing easy in a single flow.

• Make the output really self explanatory (e.g., a one line summary and a clear button for the next step).

• Remove walls for recipients.

• Add partner distribution (ex. auto send whatever the output is to another tool where it will be used).

• Launch the loop with one primary channel.

Step 3: Measure

Track loop velocity and yield daily. Here are some metrics you’ll want to monitor and use to iterate on your loop:

• Loop velocity: What’s the amount of time from input to output to next input?

• Loop yield: How many new inputs per output?

• Invite to use rate: How many recipients become active in seven days?

• First value time: How much time to the first successful output?

• Reinvestment rate: What is the % of outputs that are shared or published?

• Payback from loops: What amount of CAC (customer acquisition cost) is from customers/users via the loop?

Some ideas to put this into action

• Book 3 calls with people who match your ICP. Ask questions and understand their pain. Take notes!! (don’t just rely on an AI notetaker). Write a one pager for the ICP based on what you learn. Try and answer the 4 questions I asked above:

  • What’s this person trying to accomplish?

  • What are the triggers that makes your solution urgent?

  • Who’s your anti ICP?

  • What are they using/doing today that frustrates them and would cause them to switch to you?

• Ship your first growth loop. This could be a simple comparison page, a calculator, or a short demo that shows the time savings.

• Choose the channel you’re going to focus on. Publish 2-3 times a week and point to a single action.

• Avoid these pitfalls

  • Don’t just stick a loop somewhere and expect it to work. Be thoughtful about how you incorporate it to avoid feeling transactional. Tailor it to your customers and their needs.

  • Lots of folks are bolting on AI features that demo well but don’t add value for the user/customer and fuel a loop.

  • Don’t try and chase a bunch of channels at once. Be focused and get 1 right first before you expand to others.

  • The digital world has evolved past impressions and clicks. Focus on tracking the reinvestment part of the loop (i.e., how the user/customer’s action drives another person to sign up/buy).

Wrapping up

Having a good product or service isn’t enough anymore. A great experience, speed to value, and distribution are crucial in the AI age.

Thinking in loops forces you to design not just for acquiring one customer, but how that cultivates more customers. Every loop adds value to the next person, which enables a better experience and compounds growth.

Onward & upward,
Drew

P.s. If we haven’t met yet, hello! I’m Drew Burdick, Founder and Managing Partner at StealthX. We work with brands to design & build great customer experiences that win. I share ideas weekly through this newsletter & over on the Building Great Experiences podcast. Have a question? Feel free to contact us, I’d love to hear from you.