Growth has a quality

Two companies can add the same number of customers and become very different businesses.

One attracts people who remain, refer others, and become more valuable over time. The other acquires people through incentives who disappear when the incentives stop.

The headline growth rate cannot show this distinction.

Growth has a source, a cost, a level of attachment, and a consequence for the system around it. Those qualities determine whether expansion strengthens the business or quietly weakens it.

The number matters. The mechanism behind the number matters more.