One of the funny things which happens to companies when they find “product/market fit” is that often the people in the company shift from experimentation, exploring new opportunities and pushing the boundaries to defending the status quo.
And this makes perfect sense — it is an incredibly hard-won victory to get to product/market fit in the first place. Once you get there you want to make sure you extract as much value out of this position as possible.
You see this happen to companies left, right and center. And there surely is nothing wrong with it. But it poses a risk: Once your company turns into a status quo defending organization, it becomes harder and harder to innovate and disrupt not just the market but also yourself.
The best you can do might be to stay alert to the challenge, stay nimble and create enough room for your organization to stay hungry. It is, of course, a much larger problem for the incumbent — but make no mistake: The status quo trap is happening to maturing startups all the time as well…