Hooked

Editorial review

Eyal's four-step 'Hook Model' became the lingua franca of growth teams for a reason: it names the loop behind many successful consumer products. Read it alongside ethics-minded critiques — the framework is powerful precisely because it is morally neutral until you choose what to build.

AI-generated summary

Eyal breaks habit formation in products into trigger, action, variable reward, and investment — showing how teams design onboarding, notifications, and progression systems that return users without relying on paid acquisition alone.

Key takeaways

• 1

  Variable rewards spike dopamine uncertainty more reliably than fixed rewards.

• 2

  Investment stored in the product raises switching costs over time.

• 3

  External triggers decay; internal triggers tied to emotion are the durable engine.

• 4

  Ethical product work starts with which vulnerabilities you refuse to monetize.