I'm an engineer and I'm incredibly frustrated by this. There are so many companies for whom "running lean" means "be ready to pivot at any moment" instead of "find paying customers and build the thing they want how they want it".

I know there's a lot of grumbling on here when sales teams promise products that aren't built yet, but I'd rather build a product with an actual end-user case than a product with a hypothetical customer that no one may ever end up using. (It's also the reason I hate "stealth" startups -- your idea isn't unique, and if you think your competitive advantage is the element of surprise instead of implementation then you're in for a bad time.)

Any other engineers in the same boat?

sort of, except there's still a problem of building things people ask for vs building things paying customers ask for. And until you've got paying customers, everyone is a potential paying customer, and trying to discern what specifics to build to get the payments coming in... it's difficult. Not impossible, certainly, but it also gets very easy for people to dismiss good input from potential customers by saying it's not part of the "vision". There's a tough balance to strike there, and it's been compounded (imo) by half the founders out there thinking they're steve jobs, and focusing on their own vision of things above all else.

I'm heartened by this autopsy.io site, hoping it grows, as it can be a place where failure can be reviewed and lessons can be learned, directly from the horses' mouths, so to speak. Failure gets swept under the rug too much, and I think we're seeing a bit of shifting in that area, to start acknowledging it publicly.

I have met 2 of the founders in this list personally, and was a bit surprised by the stories - not entirely, there's nothing earth-shattering in the details - but still surprised to see the shutdowns.

I think that, boiled down, it down it's part of the same problem.

Lack of traction comes from poor focus on customers — whether that's marketing, feedback, or strategy. Without that pure focus on your paying customers you can't iterate and create a great product.