Kevin Kwok on Loops, Atomic Concepts, and Company DNA

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Kevin Kwok writes essays that change how you see companies. His blog Kwokchain is a masterclass in identifying the hidden loops and structural patterns that explain why some tech companies dominate while others stall.

The Core Philosophy

Kwok’s approach can be boiled down to one idea: find the loops. Whether analyzing Zillow, Figma, or Canva, he looks for the compounding mechanisms that let a company get stronger as it grows.

From his About page:

I’m particularly interested in understanding the underlying structures that shape industries and the core loops that drive companies.

His tagline—“Seeking wonder. Hardly agentic."—hints at his style: curious observer, not aggressive operator. He lets the analysis speak for itself.

Key Concepts

Data Content Loops

Kwok’s essay on Rich Barton (founder of Expedia, Zillow, Glassdoor) introduced the concept of Data Content Loops—a repeatable playbook where companies:

  1. Take information that was previously hidden or scattered
  2. Aggregate it into public, searchable content
  3. Use that content to dominate search and own demand
  4. Convert that attention into durable network effects

Zillow did this with home prices (the Zestimate). Glassdoor did it with company reviews. Expedia did it with flight and hotel prices. Each took whispered information and made it public knowledge.

Rich Barton’s companies became public Schelling Points. They create common knowledge in their industries from information only middlemen had access to before.

The insight: making uncommon knowledge common creates a network effect. Once Zillow became the reference point for home values, it was hard to displace.

Atomic Concepts

In his analysis of how Figma and Canva compete with Adobe, Kwok introduces atomic concepts—the fundamental primitives around which a product is built.

Different products can address the same market but have completely different atomic concepts:

The key insight: when customer needs shift, the right atomic concept changes. Adobe’s pixel-level control was perfect for photo editing but wrong for designing web UIs. Figma chose different atoms—and won.

The best products map to how customers think about their workflow. They match the abstraction level of their customers: not too high that it’s unusable, but not too low that it’s hard to use easily.

Loops as Kindling

Not all loops are created equal. Kwok distinguishes between bootstrap loops (that get you started) and scale loops (that compound over time).

Data content loops often act as kindling—they help reach the minimum viable scale where stronger loops like brand, network effects, and ecosystem lock-in can kick in.

Data content loops are surprisingly underutilized by tech companies compared to how effective they’ve been. They have a natural invisible asymptote—and often diminishing returns on more data over time.

Career Path

Kwok’s background informs his structural thinking:

He’s based outside Silicon Valley, which might explain his outsider perspective—analyzing companies from first principles rather than pattern-matching to what’s hot.

Writing Style

Kwok writes long-form essays that feel like private memos made public. His pieces on Figma and the Rich Barton playbook are cited across tech Twitter and quoted in investor decks.

His approach:

  1. Start with the mechanism – What’s the underlying loop or structural advantage?
  2. Use concrete examples – Zillow’s Zestimate, Glassdoor’s reviews, Figma’s multiplayer
  3. Draw general principles – Patterns that apply beyond the specific company
  4. Write sparingly – Essays are infrequent but dense

What You Can Learn

If you’re building products or analyzing companies, Kwok’s framework offers concrete tools:

For product builders:

For strategists:

Resources