I’ve been in several startups that died this way. They were hardware startups; there was a big jump between research tools (relatively cheap, flexible, low throughput, expert-labor-intensive) and limited production tools (10X more expensive, much less flexible, 100X higher throughput, capital intensive). If you buy production tools before your process really works, you lose flexibility to further develop your process. The loss of flexibility is often fatal.
I’ve been in several startups that died this way. They were hardware startups; there was a big jump between research tools (relatively cheap, flexible, low throughput, expert-labor-intensive) and limited production tools (10X more expensive, much less flexible, 100X higher throughput, capital intensive). If you buy production tools before your process really works, you lose flexibility to further develop your process. The loss of flexibility is often fatal.