The real magic is: customer acquisition cost < customer lifetime value Now, one way to get there is referrals. But other ways to get there is to have a produc

The real magic is: customer acquisition cost < customer lifetime value Now, one way to get there is referrals. But other ways to get there is to have a product good enough that at least you get repeat customers, and still yet another way is to find a way to cheaply acquire new customers through advertising/marketing/distribution channels/etc (i.e., "growth hacker" route). That last one is pretty hard to sustain if your product is "bad" but might work if your product is "ok". The other two require varying degrees of positive customer experiences. Generally the tried and true way to get the job done is to build a product that reliably gets return customers to maximize customer lifetime value. Then you continually reinvest every dime you've got on sales/marketing to drive out that fast growth to give yourself advantages of scale as quickly as you possibly can. This tried and true approach works better where you aren't in a market where you are constantly reinventing your product/company (i.e., not the tech business). For tech companies, the referral approach is the easier one to pull off. So while I wouldn't entirely disagree with the article, I think as a consequence of perhaps being overly focused on tech, it's under appreciating the value of a proper marketing & sales strategy.