What We Mean When We Say "Flywheel"
From rollercoasters to startups: the flywheel stores energy, builds momentum, and turns early effort into lasting acceleration.
In the digital world — the AI space, the startup space, the tech-blog space — we throw around a lot of strange words.
Benchmark. Dashboard. Blueprint. Flywheel.
At some point, you just use them without thinking.
Until you stop for a second and wonder: wait, what is a flywheel, actually?
The flywheel is one of those metaphors that hides real, fascinating technology behind it.
And once you get what a flywheel really does, the metaphor becomes even sharper — and a lot more useful.
So, what is a flywheel?
Literally, a flywheel is a heavy wheel that stores kinetic energy — the energy of motion.
Once you get a flywheel spinning, it really, really wants to keep spinning.
It resists changes. It carries momentum.
Flywheels are everywhere once you start looking:
- In old steam engines (to smooth out the force of the pistons)
- In pottery wheels (so you can keep shaping clay without constantly kicking)
- In cassetterecorders (to keep the tape running smoothly)
- In modern energy storage systems (charging up a spinning mass instead of a battery)
- And — dramatically — in rollercoaster launches, where a flywheel builds up massive speed and hurls the tiny cars onto the track in a split-second.
The feeling of sudden acceleration when a rollercoaster launches?
That’s flywheel energy, released all at once.
It takes real effort to get a flywheel moving. But once it's spinning, it can do a lot with very little extra energy.
Flywheels
Why do we love the "flywheel" metaphor in business — especially startups?
When people say "we're building a flywheel" or "we're creating a flywheel effect", they usually mean two things:
1. Acceleration from stored energy
Startups know this feeling intimately.
You put in endless work upfront: building the product, finding early users, tuning the experience.
It’s slow. It’s heavy.
But if you survive that first painful stretch, the system starts to help you.
Early customers become advocates.
New users drive more visibility.
Energy starts feeding on itself.
Suddenly the "car" — your company — is speeding down the track.
Not because you're pushing harder, but because the flywheel you built is releasing its power.
2. Constant force and resilience
A flywheel isn't just about speed. It's also about stability.
It smooths out bumps. It keeps momentum going even when conditions aren't perfect.
In a startup, that matters. A lot.
You don’t want to be fighting friction at every turn.
A working flywheel carries you over the slow patches without needing a crisis to re-motivate everything.
In short: a flywheel turns fragile effort into lasting, building energy.
The hidden beauty of the flywheel
What I love about the flywheel — in engineering and in life — is how invisible the early stages are.
At first, you push and push, and nothing seems to happen.
You question whether you're even moving.
But if you keep applying effort, at the right angles, in the right rhythms, something shifts.
The wheel starts to help you.
That’s not magic. That’s physics.
But it feels like magic.
And that's exactly why the flywheel metaphor feels so alive in startups, creative work, personal projects.
The early grind matters more than you realise. Not because of what you get immediately, but because of the momentum you store for later.
One more thing
There’s a reason why real flywheels are heavy.
If they were light, they couldn’t store any serious energy.
The heaviness, the slow early grind, is part of the design.
If your project, startup, or personal journey feels heavy at the start:
Good.
You’re building mass.
You’re building momentum.
Give it time.
Keep pushing.
And when the flywheel finally spins on its own, you’ll feel it.
The humming and spinning
Rob Hoeijmakers
Rob Hoeijmakers
Rob Hoeijmakers
Rob Hoeijmakers