Did the idea of growth hacks make us lazier as builders?
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I used to waste way too much time looking for clever distribution tricks or viral loops, hoping I could skip the slow grind. But whenever I see a success story broken down the hack usually turns out to be pretty hands-on work personally onboarding users replying to feedback and actually writing good content.
Sometimes calling basic consistent marketing a growth hack makes it sound like there's some secret shortcut to traction.
curious if anyone here has seen a tactic actually work long-term that wasn't just good old-fashioned work in disguise?
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I believe distribution is the key component for any growth hack in today's world, which coincidentally is one of the oldest tactics in books when it comes to sales. Due to vibe coding, now the sample set for indie builders has expanded significantly as even non-technical builders can ship a working prototype (not getting into what happens to it in prod) so basically there are a lot of options today for some things which weren't so even a couple of years ago. Which is why it all comes to distribution and figuring out the channel which moves needle for you. And in that process people tend to get more hands-on as mentioned not just to onboard users but to have just any conversation with your potential customers and TG.
“Growth hacking” is marketing when the team treats growth as an engineering problem: identify the constraint, test hypotheses quickly, instrument the funnel, and iterate across product and distribution.
Marketing asks: Who is the customer, why should they care, and how do we earn demand?
Growth hacking asks: Which measurable bottleneck can we move next, and what experiment will tell us?
But neither replaces the other. A clever viral loop cannot rescue weak positioning, poor retention, or a product users do not truly need. And content, founder-led sales, customer interviews, partnerships, and community-building may look unglamorous, but they are often the inputs that create the insight behind the so-called hack.