If naming the Existing Market Trap was the first step—this is the second.
Because the Existing Market Trap doesn’t show up all at once. It shows up in patterns.
We’ve worked with hundreds of companies. And again and again, we witness the same stalls. Companies that didn’t start with a bad product. They started with belief that broke down.
And when we zoomed out, we realized:
There aren’t a million failure modes.
There are 13.
We call them the Deadly Sins.
And today, we’re naming them all.
#1. The Engineer’s Dilemma
You fall in love with the product and forget to design the market.
#2. The Obviously Better Fallacy
You assume being faster, cheaper, or more advanced will be enough to win – without changing the frame of the game.
#3. The Pinball Effect
You bounce from feedback to feature with no point of view, no north star, and no strategy to escape the noise.
#4. The Horizontal Tool Illusion
You build something flexible for everyone—and end up resonating with no one.
#5. The Product-Led Growth Myth
You rely on self-serve growth loops to carry the company, but hit a wall because even legendary products can’t speak for themselves.
#6. The Market Share Fantasy
You chase a slice of a giant TAM instead of designing a new market you can actually lead.
#7. The Sales Hype Machine
You hire sellers to “go faster” before you’ve nailed the POV, leading to confusion, struggle, churn, and pipeline fiction.
#8. The Distribution Delusion
You mistake reach for power, thinking that access to customers is the same as owning a category.
#9. The VC Pressure Cooker
You raise big, grow fast, and sacrifice clarity for speed—only to find yourself trapped inside a market you didn’t design.
#10. The Conglomerate Identity Crisis
You have too many products for too many buyers and end up with no clear POV, no obvious enemy, no obvious hero, and no lane to lead.
#11. The Brand Vanity Obsession
You polish the logo, tune the tagline, and obsess over brand perception—without fixing the real problem: how will you design and dominate a giant new category that matters?
#12. The Point Tool Ceiling
You solve one piece of the problem, get pigeonholed as a feature, and stall out before reaching platform scale.
#13. The Existential Decline
You are still the Category King—but the market (problem definition) has moved beyond that category, and you haven’t.
What Sins Are You In? Take Our EMT Diagnostic
A 3-minute diagnostic, built to identify the highest-priority sins you’re approaching or already facing.
The EMT Diagnostic gives you a snapshot of your current risk profile.
It doesn’t just tell you what’s wrong.
It shows you how to start escaping.
Because once you can name the Sin, you can stop repeating it.
Take the Diagnostic →
Know the patterns. Escape the trap.
