“I know you know four of the five points that this growth hacker made on Twitter it's like that's not why the business is being successful those four things are completely irrelevant and aren't what's fundamentally driving the business it's this other thing that you can't even see”

Visible Tactics Rarely Explain Why Apps Grow — You're Copying The Noise, Not The Signal

Dan has seen the same pattern repeat: a growth account breaks down a successful app into five tactics, and four of them are completely wrong — he knows because he knows the founders. The real driver is invisible from the outside. Copying observable product choices (paywall design, ad creative, onboarding steps) from competitors imports their experiments without their context. Dan's alternative: understand the underlying theory of why something works, then derive your own implementation.