Urgency
I've observed, on several occasions, at multiple companies, senior managers talking openly about deliberately instilling "a sense of constant urgency" into the team. I don't know if we were perceived as unmotivated (we were) or if there was some external threat coming that warranted urgency (debatable), or whether management just picked up on the "a sense of urgency" phrase from some HBS article (probably). Either way, the end result was this kind of "forced urgency" with motivational speeches about how we should all feel urgency about the company's success, and that every task assigned to everyone was always an emergency. Needless to say, it was a great place to work.
Reaction Mode
I've worked at very few software companies that seemed to have an actual long term plan AND were willing to stick to it. It's easier to "just do what the customers are asking for today and then change to do what they are asking for tomorrow". I've worked at companies that pretended to be selling a product, when, in reality, nobody wanted their product as-is and they would get roped into constantly doing custom engineering for VIP customers (bonus: every customer was a VIP customer). So, while the team would be ostensibly working on improving their core product, in reality, they were adding buzzers and lights that had little to do with the core function of the product, in order to react to what one or two customers wanted. The recent "agile" craze has not helped in this regard.
Holy crap, that's a terrible thing to do. But if senior management thinks like that, it would explain some stupid stuff I've seen in various companies...
I think a startup where you can consistently observe sign#2, without being in a UAT[1] phase, is a startup that's about to fail.
1. http://www.techopedia.com/definition/3887/user-acceptance-te...