The most common pitfall in the death cycle are:

Developers are expensive

To afford great developers, you need funding

To get traction, you need great developers

Turning to offshore, cheap developers that drain time and money

Most founders burn valuable cash in the pre-Series A cycle of death

To get funding, you need traction

Locking in off-the-shelf software that breaks under basic needs

Chasing great, local talent who will never leave cushy jobs