This pre-investment spike for startups reminds me somewhat of the pump and dump marketing tactics of a more mature company looking for a sale or an IPO. I've been in companies that have done this: go overboard trying to game some unsustainable metric, such as top line traffic, until you don't have to anymore. If you have done digital marketing for awhile, you can come up with dozens of ways to "grow" your metrics that appear sustainable on the surface but have some kind of catch that makes it impractical long term.