Startups Don’t Usually Crash. They Erode.
What I learned the hard way about small cracks, compounding problems, and what actually kills a business.
I used to think failure was dramatic.
Like one big mistake. A disastrous launch. A huge deal that didn’t close.
Something loud and final.
But looking back at my first real business attempt, that’s not how it happened.
We didn’t crash.
We slowly fell apart.
We kept growing, sort of. New customers were coming in.
We were hiring. Shipping. Posting wins.
But underneath, small cracks were forming. And we didn’t stop long enough to notice—let alone fix them.
Until they weren’t small anymore.
Speed hides problems—until it doesn’t
In the early days, speed feels like a strategy. I’m sure many of you are familiar with this:
You move fast because you’re trying to survive.
You say yes to things that don’t quite fit.
You ignore issues because, hey, there are customers and momentum and potential.
And at first, that works.
Revenue starts to come in.
You’re doing the startup dance.
People are paying attention.
But you also start taking shortcuts:
You duct-tape the product instead of rebuilding it.
You hire quickly to fill gaps, not based on real fit.
You throw money at marketing channels you haven’t fully understood.
And every time something small breaks, you think, “It’s fine. We will get around to fixing it soon, when we’re bigger."
Spoiler: you won’t.
Small cracks turn into structural problems
Here’s what that looked like for us:
We had one customer segment that paid well but needed constant support. They churned fast, but we told ourselves the revenue was worth it. It wasn’t.
We kept using a tool that didn’t scale because replacing it felt like too much work. Months later, that decision blocked a key integration. We lost a big deal.
We launched a product update without revisiting how customers were using the original one. The response? Confusion. Complaints. Churn.
None of those moments killed us outright.
But together, they changed our slope.
They slowed the business down, and that killed out margin.
Even worse, they drained team morale.
And eventually, they stacked high enough that fixing things felt like more work than starting over.
The most dangerous phase is “still working, kind of”
When something is obviously broken, you deal with it.
But when it’s “almost” working, you delay.
You tell yourself:
“Just a bit more time.”
“We’re close.”
“One more big client will fix this.”
That’s the trap.
Maybe you know the drill, Your team is stretched and financials flatten. possibly the mission is drifting.
However, the thing is... you’re technically alive, so you don’t stop.
You just… keep going. Slowly losing altitude.
That’s erosion. And it’s how most businesses fade.
What would I have differently back then?
In hindsight, if I could wind back the clock, I’d spend more time asking:
What’s barely working right now that we’re pretending is fine?
What would we stop doing if we weren’t afraid of what people might think?
Where are we turning $1 into $0.80, and calling it “growth”?
The best businesses I’ve seen aren’t just fast. They’re sharp and on the ball.
Why?
They spot decay early.
They run small tests before scaling.
They don’t let ego or momentum drown out signals.
They also know that fixing a small leak when it’s small costs way less than rebuilding a whole system after it floods.
A founder I learned this from
I once spoke to a founder who ran a bootstrapped SaaS company—no funding, no hype.
His growth was slow, but steady.
Every six months, he’d run a full “truth review”:
What’s working? What’s losing money? What’s annoying our customers?
And if something wasn’t returning value, they’d stop—even if it looked “successful” from the outside.
That discipline saved them.
They were still around years later, when bigger, noisier competitors had burned out.
So if you’re early — pay attention now
The point isn’t to be paranoid.
The point is: small problems don’t stay small.
And if you wait too long, you’ll be fixing things under pressure — or worse, when it’s already too late.
So take the extra day to fix the system.
Rethink where you stand.
Have those hard conversations with your team.
Don’t chase another growth spurt until you’re sure your engine can handle it.
Because speed is great—until it breaks what you’re building.