For every startup, there comes a time when you stop looking around and start pushing, the long haul.  Your goals are clear so you pour all your resources into filling and expanding the rank and start beating the marching drum.  At the executive level, focus shifts from faces and dreams to numbers and dollars.  It's a time of metamorphosis that turns a group of people into an engine of profit.

If all the pushing goes well, swell.  If not, there is no point in keep pushing in the same direction.  But all to often, startups I worked with over the years continued to pump away until the money ran out.  The smart thing to do would have been to 'turn' your product line toward a direction that will give more easily just as a wrestler might.  Some VCs see 'turning' as compromising of the original business plan, a great poopoo.  Hogwash.

If the landscape changes, the map must change as well.