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Founders no longer work on it full time. This is an extremely strong indicator and I've never seen a startup recover from this.

Employees get tasked to things other than the core business of the startup. Usually consulting or some other side business.

Startups rarely ever die loudly. They just seem to crawl off away from everything else and try to die as quietly as possible.

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What if the core business changes direction - and the there is a change up of the board....

If they think they can afford a change like this then I think that's a wound, not a kill.

It's okay if they change core business. The problem is when employees do what they didn't sign up for, or when they focus on things that are not the core business (e.g. consulting or some other company held by the same owner).

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