1. Pricing Models
The fastest, highest-margin dimension, yet most startups set price once at launch and rarely revisit it. Willingness-to-pay research, packaging, and expansion pricing - Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - are undermanaged even though they move the P&L faster than almost anything.
2. Business Processes and Automation
Unglamorous and internal, so they lose the resource fight to shiny features, and founders are often working from an outdated assumption that automation is expensive. It no longer is. This is where the sustainable moat lives, and it’s now cheap to build.
3. Non-Dilutive Financing
Especially in Canada, founders leave real money on the table by defaulting to “bootstrap or raise” and never pursuing SR&ED, IRAP, and other grants that cost them no equity.
They also often fail to do their homework on financing models (SAFEs vs priced-rounds), business structure, under-fund, set unrealistic dilution constraints, fail to understand tax credit implications and investor de-risking strategies before they raise.
4. Partnership Types
Founders overlook the distinction between partners who serve demand (channel) and partners who build reputation (communities, associations, ecosystem fits), and waste months on channel deals that were never going to create a market.
The Pattern
- Founders over-index on the visible dimensions (product launches, fundraise announcements, new markets)
- Founders under-invest in the invisible, cheaper dimensions (pricing discipline, process automation, non-dilutive funding, investor de-risking strategies, and strategic partnerships)
Related drivers: Pricing models, Business processes, Financing, and Partnerships.
Working with Authgnosis
Authgnosis is my AI-native business growth consulting practice.
I’ve turned the Six Drivers framework into a Growth Diagnostic Checklist: a section-by-section guide covering all six drivers plus the talent layer and a “Fulcrum” assessment.
It’s the prerequisite information I need to map a company’s current state, desired future state, and co-create a growth strategy that identifies the one or two moves that will move your growth needle fastest.
Get the Authgnosis Growth Diagnostic Checklist
The full section-by-section diagnostic, free. If you would like this analysis applied to your business, that is my Strategic Growth Plan engagement.
Sources: Boardman, Shapiro & Vining (2004), JSME 1(2); Andrew von Nordenflycht (2010); Canadian funding per SR&ED (Budget 2025) and NRC-IRAP (2025–26).