Pillar
Growth traps
The deals that look big and aren’t. The marketing that buys vanity. The growth that breaks the company that earns it.
Most failed companies look like they were growing right up until the quarter they didn't. The growth was real. The trap underneath it was also real, and longer.
A growth trap is any pattern where the metric improves while the underlying business deteriorates. Revenue up, cash down. Logos added, churn deferred. ICP drifted, pipeline inflated. The trap is hard to see because the dashboard is reading the version of the company that's working. The version that's breaking lives one query deeper.
The essays here name the traps the operator can still escape. The deal that looks big and isn't. The marketing that buys vanity. The customer who's worth less than they cost. The growth that breaks the company that earns it.
Start here
When Marketing Should Stop Spending
CAC payback is climbing and marketing wants more budget. Change what the marketing owner is paid on, set the ceiling yourself, and be the one who says no.
Most A/B Tests Don't Need More Traffic
The growth team paused four tests after three weeks with no significance. Traffic wasn't the problem — their read on what counts as a real difference was.
Your pivot is a second product in disguise
A pivot that keeps the old product isn't a pivot; it's a second product with better PR. If headcount didn't move, neither did you.
More on growth traps
- The Whale Customer Calculation
- Outbound Looks Like Working
- The Vanity Cohort
- Free Trials Cost More Than Sales Reps
- Most Lead Magnets Are Liability Magnets
- Most Pilots Don't
- Eight Minutes of Demo, Nine Days to Close
- Referrals Are Not a Channel
- Doubling the Channel Halved It
- What Your Loudest Customer Costs
- Don't Hire a Head of Sales Yet
- The ranking with no buyers
- Winning the Open Rate, Losing the Inbox
- 40% of Signups, Gone by Tuesday
- 804 registrants, zero net customers