Is it the way of thinking or the things you assumed the business already had that were invaluable? You assumed
* The existence of a large enough steady stream of paying customers to quickly gather statistics on. "Steady" is especially atypical in many environments.
* Enough runway that you can afford to tackle issues one-by-one (i.e. using a control) rather than scrambling and guessing at what is going to work. If users come in "bursts" due to marketing campaigns or whatever then this issue is compounded because each burst can cost a significant fraction of your runway.
* The business is at steady state (e.g. you aren't planning a "grab the market" phase that runs at a loss and then a "make money" phase that leverages the brand recognition, network effects, etc that you've built)