Thanks! There is definitely a chance you pick the wrong ones up front, but I think the knowledge you would gain in those two months to lead you to that conclusion is not time wasted, but likely time well spent :)
I am not usually a fan of articles about "growth hacking" because I don't think the term means much, but this articles does outline some interesting growth methods employed by some famous companies & why they required an initial phase of growth first.
Link building can often be bad like you imply. I think the right way to do it is to find the right places to share content with the right people so it spreads organically. I am not sure I would agree that creating new accounts on lots of platforms and creating links is a good or sustainable practice these days...
I am glad to see KISSMETRICS posting something like this, because I very much agree with the idea that authenticity is key to business success, but not enough companies recognize it, including startups.
No argument from me there - that is definitely the number one problem. In the future, I'll be tackling some of those topics on how to know your customer, since it is so critically important to business success. It's harder to fix existing sites if they haven't done that legwork up front :)