What industry were you in (consumer/enterprise/biotech/consumer/other?) Was it technology heavy or light? Were capital requirements high? What was the customer lifecycle like? What was the competitive environment like?
The problem was mostly that there were plateaus where cash would have made things much easier, but nobody was interested in funding it. For example, taxes hit and our 7% margin went down to 1%. We migrated stock to in house, and holding half a ton of stock got margins from 1% to 30%.
We could have hit 80% margin with about $50k plus distributed it in a lot of major stores. It would have been better promo than billboards and made money. But I think it was a hard time to close deals - everyone we approached either was buckling down for recession, investing in crypto, or chasing after some other kind of sexy tech (e-commerce was going out of fashion).
You can lose PMF though. We've slipped it a couple times. This is why you need product teams.
Consumer market, e-commerce. Moderate tech. Low capital. Target market was diet/health so we got a spike in income at the start of the year which slowed down a lot then rose again end of the year, near wedding season.
Then scaling with PMF is okish. Scaling without is complicated as things doesnt stack up