UNLIKE is the row that comes back empty Founders will talk about the payoff for an hour and ask what the buyer stops paying for the day they sign you, and the room goes quiet. That silence has a name, a contract and a renewal date

the empty row is such a clear image. do you use it in sales calls too?

Last quarter four founders walked me through their products. Three shared one problem, and none named it correctly. All three called it runway. CB Insights refreshed its shutdown analysis in March 2026 across 431 venture-backed companies that died since 2023. 70% ran out of capital. Sitting under that: weak product-market fit at 43%, bad timing at 29%, unsustainable unit economics at 19%. The cash-out gets recorded. The reason rarely does. First versions look far better engineered than they did two years ago. The case for building the thing at all is where I see no improvement. Why underpricing gets more expensive to reverse every month: https://www.duskolicanin.com/blog/saas-founder-mistakes-i-see-every-quarter-2026 #SaaS #ProductMarketFit #StartupLessons #SoftwareEngineering