I am young and have only been at one startup so with a sample size of N=1 here is my "possibly in trouble startup indicator". - Unclear go to market strategy/p

I am young and have only been at one startup so with a sample size of N=1 here is my "possibly in trouble startup indicator". - Unclear go to market strategy/pivoted often (>3 times) - Strongly established politics and structure even though the company is young (<2 years) - Lots of work being done that does not relate to a specific product (if half the employees are working on tooling that's a bad sign) Your description does not fit the above criteria, I would expect a startup to be somewhat disorganized and having lot of domain-specific knowledge is good. As for regulations that might lead to a pivot but it's not necessarily terrible. Keep in mind that my answer is based on a very limited description so it's most likely entirely wrong.