CONCEPT
Engine of Growth
Ries's taxonomy of the three mechanisms by which startups achieve sustainable growth — sticky, viral, paid — each transformed by AI in ways that create new opportunities and new traps more seductive than the opportunities are obvious.
The engine of growth is the mechanism by which a startup achieves sustainable growth. Ries's original taxonomy identified three: the sticky engine grows by retaining customers; the viral engine grows by customers bringing other customers; the paid engine grows by investing revenue in customer acquisition. Each has its own metrics, dynamics, and sustainability conditions. The AI revolution has not changed this taxonomy but has changed the dynamics of each engine — creating a new capacity for real-time personalization in the sticky engine, creation-driven virality in the viral engine, and acquisition-cost collapse in the paid engine. Each transformation carries a characteristic trap, and the traps are more dangerous because they produce metrics that look like success until the underlying dynamics are examined.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The sticky engine grows by retention, which depends on the quality of the ongoing customer experience. AI allows iteration at a cadence previously impossible — features