The Growth Signal Stack: Measure the Decision, Not the Available Data
A decision-first framework for choosing growth metrics without mistaking publishing, rankings, or TVL for attention, adoption, or customer value.
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Growth marketing research. Field notes.
Research and operating notes on ecosystem growth, go-to-market execution, and growth engineering for AI, gaming, and Web3.
From Commit to Customer: A Shipping-to-Demand System for Technical Products
A practical operating system for translating meaningful product changes into clear explanations, useful distribution, measurable action, and market learning.
The Minimum Viable Growth Ecosystem: How to Design a Connected Public Surface
A practical system for deciding which public surfaces a consumer-crypto product should maintain, repair, consolidate, or deliberately decline.
How to Run ChatGPT Ads Effectively, and What the $1,200 Burn Post Got Wrong
A ~1% CTR is one reported comparison, not a verdict. What the widely cited $1,200 ChatGPT Ads experiment measured—and how to instrument a test properly.
The Measurement Dark Matter of ChatGPT Ads
A reported conversion, an observed site action, and a verified customer are different facts. Nine public ChatGPT Ads case records show why that distinction matters.
Meta's Own Numbers Show Growth—But Not Which AI Caused It
Meta's Q2 2026 ad revenue rose $12.8 billion year over year. Its impression, price, and Advantage+ figures still cannot isolate a Muse contribution.
What Meta's Reels Performance Evidence Actually Measures
Meta's Reels ad page pairs a 2023 purchase survey with an undated 15-test creative analysis. Their populations, outcomes, and limits are different.
What Makes Indie Game Devlogs Go Viral on TikTok? 12,489 Videos
We tracked 12,489 TikToks from 314 indie game developers. The devlog checklist made no difference; a breakout lifted the next four posts by up to 1.35x.
AI 3D Gets a Fifth of the Reach on TikTok: 7,317 Game-Art Clips
AI 3D clips get 0.21x the views per follower of traditional 3D on TikTok. Character animation reaches 9.1x, Blender scenes 8.6x. 7,317 game-art clips measured.
Steam's Coming Soon List Skips 71% of Games. What Earns Followers
71% of upcoming Steam games show no release date and never appear in the default Coming Soon list. Demos earn 1.67x the followers. Data from 60,790 games.
Blackbird's Four Restaurant Counts—and the Number It Never Published
Hi Violet compared Blackbird's four public restaurant states, reconstructed the reward economy behind 128.5 million FLY, and explains why counts aren't contribution.
Courtyard's Own Numbers Say Its Monthly GMV Is $50,000. They Also Say $50 Million.
Hi Violet traced Courtyard's conflicting public GMV labels and funding-page dates, reconstructed its drop-to-habit arc, and argues repeat transacting—not GMV—is the metric.
The Price of Mapping the World: What Hivemapper's Own Numbers Reveal
Hi Violet audited Hivemapper's public supply and pricing claims, found three arithmetic conflicts, and derived what a week of global road coverage is worth.
AI Detector Robustness: Data and Methods from Our RAID Reanalysis
Full aggregate tables from Hi Violet's RAID reanalysis: detector accuracy under 11 attacks, per-document flip rates, per-domain false positives, methods.
Can a Paraphraser Beat AI Detection? (Data, Not Hype)
Measured on 480,000 generations: paraphrasing makes one detector 5.4pp more accurate and another 17.0pp worse. Evasion is a detector lottery, not a strategy.
Where Detectors Break: The Domain Map
One pooled 5% setting, eight writing domains of truth: measured per-domain detector false-positive rates range 0.96% to 20.4%.
The Flip Rate: Why Detector Accuracy Hides the Collapse
Measured on 480,000 generations: one symbol substitution flips 93.7% of a detector's per-document verdicts. Aggregate accuracy hides the collapse.
You Cannot De-Watermark Prose: The Science Behind AI Text Provenance
Why synonym shuffling cannot guarantee clean provenance—plus RAID measurements of 11 attacks collapsing AI detectors, and Hi Violet's integrity protocol.
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