InspectForm

Three most likely causes of death, ranked by probability. They compound: #1 usually hides #2.

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Cause #1: No way in (probability ~45% of failure cases)

What happened. The founder built a clean offline capture app and a 4099 export in ten weeks. Then nobody took the call. PCA firm principals are engineers who buy from people they know. Cold emails got a 1% reply rate. Two firms trialled it and never ran a live report through it, because nobody on the team could answer "how do you handle a streamlined 4099 with a failed roof?". By month 9 there were 2 paying firms and no referrals.

Early warning signs

• Day 30: fewer than 2 firms paying for the hands-on service.
• Pilot firms "try it on an old report" but never on a live one.
• Firms ask questions about the formats that nobody on the team can answer on the call.
• No lender reviewer or ASTM E50 member knows the product exists by month 6.

Fixable? Yes, but only at the start. Sign a PCA engineer as co-founder or paid advisor before writing code (condition 1 in WHAT-TO-DO-AND-AVOID.md). After a year of building alone, this can't be fixed.

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Cause #2: The niche was too small (probability ~35%)

What happened. The product worked. Eighteen firms paid an average of $420 a month, and churn was near zero. Then growth stopped at ~$8k MRR. The mid-size firms writing GSE PCAs numbered about 150, not 400. A third were already on in-house tools or tied to an ordering platform. When rates rose, GSE volume fell and two customer firms downsized. HUD and bank PCA modules came too late to help.

Early warning signs

• The prospect list tops out under 150 firms after a real sweep.
• New pilots per month fall even while existing firms are happy.
• Customers mention being acquired or "going with the platform our lender uses".
• GSE volume caps or production fall year on year.

Fixable? Partly. Count the firms in the first 30 days, before building. If the count is under ~150, plan the second report family (HUD capital needs, bank and CMBS PCAs, or condo reserve studies) from month 6, not month 18. You can't fix the size of the niche. You can widen it with adjacent report families that use the same structured core.

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Cause #3: The custom-template trap (probability ~20%)

What happened. Each firm wanted the report to look exactly like its old Word file. The founder said yes to keep the sale. Twelve firms meant twelve report layouts, each breaking on every Fannie redline. Onboarding took three weeks per firm. At ~15 hrs/week, template maintenance ate every hour, and the product stopped improving.

Early warning signs

• Onboarding a new firm takes more than 10 days or more than 6 founder hours.
• More than 20% of support time goes to layout requests.
• A form redline takes more than 14 days to roll out, because every firm's layout needs its own fix.

Fixable? Yes. One configurable layout per report family, with slots for branding, boilerplate and cost library. Say no to anything else, or charge a one-off setup fee that covers it.

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Honourable mentions (less likely, still real)

• Liability event. A reserve schedule is wrong because of a table bug, a lender underfunds reserves, and the firm's professional-liability insurer asks who's responsible. Your terms must say the consultant owns every opinion, and your changelog must show every table change.
• GSE policy shock. FHFA caps, privatization or a change to PCA requirements. The formats are the moat, and the agencies can change them.
• A platform adds report writing. A due-diligence ordering platform ships a consultant report builder and bundles it free (not verified as planned by anyone).
• Founder-market fit gap. If no one on the team has written a PCA, you'll build what seems logical, not what a reviewer checks. That's cause #1 by another name.