Meanwhile, the actual growth is being driven by investors burning cash to offer the product/service at an unsustainable price plus spending money like water on advertising.

Which continues until the company is unloaded onto the public markets.

Because I see this attitude a lot, but as someone who has worked primarily at these enterprises (good and bad) I don't think you can think that way without being completely divorced from reality. Not all of us are working with Saudi money from Softbank.

Startups that can't stay cash flow positive might as well be enriched uranium right now. Could be worth a lot of money to the right people, but you're not keeping it around the house.

I have worked for a number of VC startups, my very first full-time programming contract was with a startup. I have seen the above Growth Theatre pattern many times. It's one of the things I have tried to avoid when interviewing employers in my career.

In my anecdotal experience, the above pattern definitely exists, although having the kind of money to do that at the scale of a WeWork is extremely rare.

Is it the majority of startups? No.

Is it a significant proportion of startups? Probably not, although those who were around during the first dot com boom will remember the "burger patties," companies everyone knows were "built to be flipped."

My claim is that there are a few companies in the Growth Theatre business all the time. That claim is not equivalent to claiming that this is the only business model for companies that take VC money.

Growth of metrics that don’t translate to $$$ in the bank means only your costs are growing.