Inexperienced management. Young employees made up vast majority of company (<5 years out of university), so both technical & strategic decisions were "blind leading the blind." CEO often made emotion decisions both in personal relationships with employees, and with investors/board. Sending marketing & opps managers to a finance course for one semester, does not make them an expert in how to run a company's finances. Having employees finance company expenses on their personal credit cards is not the right way to go about things. Employees would often spend an entire day before potential investor or board meetings to re-arrange and organize. Employees thought that was so that it would look like something had changed and progress was being made since last visit. In reality, it was just moving stuff from one spot to another.
This company has been around for over 10 years, they've had a lot of investment, and they still are a job shop who hasn't figured out who they want to be when they grow up, who their market is, who their customers are, and what they need to do to grow the business. There's so much potential in the IP of this company in their market, the execution lack of strategy & leadership from the top and management of the organization has completely squandered the market opportunity. The fish stinks from the head down.
