7) A strangely static tech pitch

The last thing was Autonomy's technology pitch, which was basically "We have a black box which revolves around Bayesian Inference and Shannon's Information Theory. It searches stuff". The funny thing wasn't the pitch though - black box companies aren't great (Warren Buffet memorably never invests in anything he doesn't understand), but they do exist and flourish. Just look at Google (hint: I doubt its search algorithm relies much on tracking html linkbacks to websites anymore).

The funny thing was that the pitch never changed, right from when I first came across Autonomy in 2000 to when it was finally taken out. Now imagine a major tech company who's pitch hasn't changed in 12 years. You can't. There isn't one. Twelve years ago Apple was a desktop computer company with a sideline in media players. Now its a phone company with a sideline in desktop computers. But Autonomy never changed.

Now none of these factors were a killer in and of themselves - I've seen them all occur in isolation at many well-run and highly profitable companies. However together they were all a bit... Strange.