The same shapes, over and over.

Around a million in revenue, burning half of it again, board pushing for a raise. The instinct is always to sell harder. Nearly always the quicker move is to look at where the money's going first, because turning up to a raise near breakeven is a completely different conversation to turning up still bleeding. Costs are also the side you actually control, and they move in weeks rather than quarters.

Revenue flattens, so the company builds something big. Six months of engineering, a launch, a small bump, then flat again. The feature was never the problem. The problem is usually that nobody can say clearly who the product is for, so every new thing gets aimed at a customer who has never been described out loud.

The price was set before there was really a product, by looking at a competitor who was also guessing. It hasn't moved since, while the product has tripled in value. Every conversation about growth is about volume, and the fastest win available is sitting untouched on the pricing page because changing it feels risky. It's a lot less risky than the alternative, which is selling twice as much of something underpriced.

Sales are slow, so the company hires someone senior and expensive to speed them up. Six months on they haven't hit quota either, and everyone quietly agrees it was a bad hire. Usually it was a good hire, sent out with a proposition nobody could have sold, because the company had never decided who it was for.

A big name agrees to a pilot. Everyone celebrates, quite rightly. The pilot runs, goes fine, and then quietly ends. Nobody agreed up front what it had to prove, who would decide, or what happens next if it works. A pilot without an exit criterion isn't a sales stage. It's a free trial with meetings attached.

Thirty meetings, warm responses, no term sheet. It gets read as bad luck or a hard market. Usually it means the story contradicts itself somewhere: the market you describe doesn't match the customers you've won, or the plan doesn't follow from the numbers. Investors almost never tell you which bit, because it isn't their job to.

Forty slides on what everyone did last quarter and almost nothing on whether it worked. The board asks better questions than the deck answers, the founder feels got at, and everyone leaves the room annoyed. The fix is nearly always four numbers and one decision to be made, not more slides.

Growth slows at home, so the company opens somewhere new. Now there are two half-solved problems, twice the cost, and a founder permanently in the wrong timezone. Expanding is the reward for having something repeatable. It's a poor substitute for one.