I could write treatise on why hiding from the state is a bad idea and an effort in futility, but anyone that doesn't want to believe it won't. So I'll distill into some bullets, reply if you want a double-click on any.

• Unless your particular state is some banana republic with no resources, it has the drop on you
• If your state is a banana republic with no resources, they are a vassal to a larger country/multinational org who has the drop on you
• You will fuck up your opsec at some point, likely in a way you can't even fully comprehend
• They probably won't care unless you get big and make them look bad
• If you get big and they don't like it they won't like that you hid even more, you turn what might be a sternly worded letter into more serious charges
• You close the doors to them to provide an off-ramp and not expose how they have the drop on you, such as a forced sale to a national champion
• You spend more time trying to preserve anonymity than on product
• Any narrative you might have about why the service/product should be or is legal gets undermined by the fact you hid, and you start drifting further away from that narrative until it catches up with you

The other reasons might be good, some not so good. A/B testing is a good one. Staying anon from the public might be good, but can be done without hiding from the state proper.

The operator does recognize they are operating from a place of fear rather than from a position of achieving goals. It is a reasonable goal to stay anon if you also don't care about growth and just want to stay under the radar keeping such projects as a side hustle for beer money. There's no right or wrong goal, just need to be clear which it is.

It's already a burden to use a pseudonym instead of your real name. Some services are simply not available to anonymous people. Using several pseudonyms is even tougher since there are many ways those identities could collide.

My main threat model is state scrutiny, particularly visibility into my activity and income.

Avoiding state scrutiny is the broadest threat model someone can tackle. In the age of widespread video recording and voice/facial recognition, the only impact an anon can make is through online communications. This is still a hurdle since your device activity is visible to passive observers whenever it wakes up, turns off, or moves locations.