Growth traps
The retention number measured on the wrong cohort
The board deck said 92% net retention. True for customers who joined two years ago. The ones who joined this year were churning at 30%.
Archive
Money decisions
The Tax Line Your Model Left at Zero
The books closed and the company owed $212,000 in taxes nobody had modeled. Franchise and sales tax come due whether or not you're profitable.
Founder decisions
The 'no' you wish you'd said in year one
The customer who became 40% of revenue. The hire who became a problem. Both were a cheap no in year one and an expensive one in year five.
Operations
Shipped Tuesday, marketed three weeks late
Engineering shipped on Tuesday. Marketing found out Tuesday afternoon. The biggest feature of the year had launched into a silence that lasted two weeks.
Team reality
Succession planning nobody owned
She'd been VP of Engineering for three years. When she gave notice, the company realized nobody else could do the job. The 30-day handoff was a fiction.
Growth traps
Don't Build a Waitlist You Can't Nurture
18,000 signups. One launch email nine months later. 4% converted. The waitlist had been a marketing trophy, not a sales pipeline.
Money decisions
The deferred revenue you accidentally spent
The customer prepaid for a year. The cash landed. The team treated it as runway. Six months later, when the refund came due, the cash was gone.
Founder decisions
The mentor who was actually a fan
He'd been advising you weekly for two years. Every call ended with him agreeing. You mistook the agreement for wisdom.
Operations
87 items, 12 shipping, zero commitments
Eighty-seven items filed under one word: roadmap. Twelve were shipping. The rest were every customer ask since 2023, waiting for a commitment that never came.
Team reality
A Comp Band Is Its Exception Process
One company's comp band said $180K to $230K; its payroll said $172K, $215K, $239K, and one $260K. Whichever number is real is the actual policy.
Growth traps
Signups rose 30%. Revenue fell 12%.
The A/B test found a lower price that converted better. It converted the company into a worse business, and the tool reported a win the whole way down.
Money decisions
The annual contract booked as monthly revenue
ARR was smooth. Cash was lumpy. The board slide flattened both into a number that was neither.
Founder decisions
The therapist you should have started seeing in year two
He held it together for 6 years. The bill came due as a marriage, his sleep, and four years of decisions he made too tired to notice how tired he was.
Operations
Don't Ship an Integration You Can't Assign
Engineering built it. Sales sold it. Product never tracked it. When it broke in production, the question 'who owns this' produced four hours of silence.
Team reality
The director with no direct reports
The title was real. The headcount under her was zero. She'd been promoted to run a function she was the only person inside of.
Growth traps
The competitor you copied into irrelevance
Every product meeting opened with what the leader shipped. Two years later you were a cheaper version of them, and buyers said so out loud.
Money decisions
The headcount plan priced at last year's salaries
The plan called for fifteen hires. The comp math came off last summer's bands. By the time offers went out, the market had moved and nobody had told the board.
Founder decisions
The board seat you gave away too cheap
The Series A lead asked for two seats and an observer. The founder agreed because the round was finally closing. The cost showed up at Series C.
Operations
When the Escalation Path Ends at the CEO
Every escalation eventually routed to his inbox, and he answered all of them. Without anyone deciding it, the company had made the CEO its final support tier.
Team reality
The remote hire you onboarded by Slack
Laptop shipped Monday. Welcome message in #team-general. Six weeks of Slack threads later, she still didn't know what the company expected of her.
Growth traps
The customers you're winning aren't the ones you're selling to
The deck still said mid-market. The closed-won list was mostly enterprise. The team ran the wrong playbook and called the gap a tough quarter.
Money decisions
Your 72% gross margin was mostly fixed cost
Gross margin held at 72% for three years. Then diligence recomputed it at 58%. The costs in the COGS line had quietly stopped being variable.
Founder decisions
The vacation you didn't take for three years
He hadn't been offline for more than four days since founding the company. He called it commitment. His team called it something else.
Operations
Your Support Team Is Hitting Every SLA and Failing
Every SLA held: first response, resolution, CSAT. The open queue still doubled in a year, because none of those metrics measured backlog.