There’s a big difference when considering Fake vs Real Growth, as there’s fake growth and real growth.
Working in a startup, you naturally bump into the word growth all the time—through articles, talks, and conversations. A lot of people in startups say they’re pursuing “growth” in their own craft and expertise.
But how do you actually measure growth, distinguishing between fake and real progress?
For a company, it’s relatively simple: you look at revenue, profit, scale.
For plants, animals, and humans, you can literally measure size or height.
Anything that’s visible and measurable is easy to track.
But unlike companies, plants, or animals, the growth of your skill set—your professional expertise—isn’t something you can check with a ruler or a simple metric. That’s why, when we talk about “growth in skill,” we often confuse fake growth with real growth.
Just like there are real flowers and artificial flowers, there’s also fake growth and real growth.
Listening to lectures and reading books isn’t growth, it’s learning
Fake growth is when you stop at listening to lectures, watching talks, and reading books and articles.
A lot of people think this alone is “growth.”
But that’s not growth—that’s learning.
Growth and learning are not the same thing.
Learning is just one method that can lead to what we consider real growth, differentiating from fake advancements.
Of course, learning is crucial.
If you’re not taking in anything new, you can’t grow at all.
But just consuming content—lectures, books, other people’s know-how—doesn’t mean you’ve grown. If that knowledge and skill never gets used in your actual work, it loses most of its meaning.
You could say “well, learning itself is meaningful,” and sure, in that case it’s more like a hobby.
But it’s still not growth.
Listening to talks and reading books is learning, not growth.
Real growth is being able to do higher-level work exceptionally well
If fake growth is where you stop at learning, then what is real growth?
There are a few ways to recognize it.
At the “lower level,” real growth usually shows up in two ways:
- Efficiency growth
- Effectiveness growth
Efficiency growth is when you can do the same level of work faster and more efficiently than before.
Effectiveness growth is when, with the same effort you used to give, you now produce higher-level work.
In simpler terms:
- Efficiency → minimize input, keep the same output quality
- Effectiveness → keep input the same, maximize the output
These two are the “entry-level” forms of real growth.
The next level of real growth is this:
You’re able to take on higher-impact work and deliver it exceptionally well.
Just as a company proves its growth through revenue and profit, an individual needs to show growth through impact.
Ideally, that impact is expressed in numbers. If that’s not possible, meaningful qualitative impact works too.
In the end, growth should be measured by the size of the impact your work creates. This is how one differentiates between fake vs real growth in skill development.
Real growth is leveling up your skills so you can handle higher-level work, at a high standard.
The highest level of real growth: building something that succeeds in the market
At the very top, the ultimate form of real growth is this:
The product you created succeeds in the market.
In the real world, the default state for products is failure. Most things don’t stick.
That’s why creating something that large numbers of strangers willingly spend their time and money on, continuously—
that’s one of the highest forms of success in terms of skill.
No matter how good your outputs look, no matter how efficiently you hit your individual KPIs, that alone doesn’t guarantee market success.
To succeed in the market, you need:
- Skill
- A truly high-quality product
- Plus timing and luck
You can’t control luck or timing.
What you can do is steadily build high-quality products, over a long time, with strong skills and persistence. This approach is crucial when comparing fake versus real growth. That’s how you increase your odds of being in the right place at the right time—and actually succeeding.
So what really counts as growth?
In the end, growth in skill should be spoken of in terms of:
- The output you create within your organization, and
- The impact you create out in the market
You can’t really claim “I’ve grown” just by counting:
- How many hours you spent learning
- How many books you read
- How many lectures you attended
Those are inputs.
Real growth shows up in what changes because of you. A crucial comparison when discussing fake vs real growth in any context.