Founders no longer work on it full time. This is an extremely strong indicator and I've never seen a startup recover from this.

Employees get tasked to things other than the core business of the startup. Usually consulting or some other side business.

Startups rarely ever die loudly. They just seem to crawl off away from everything else and try to die as quietly as possible.

What if the core business changes direction - and the there is a change up of the board....

It's okay if they change core business. The problem is when employees do what they didn't sign up for, or when they focus on things that are not the core business (e.g. consulting or some other company held by the same owner).

If they think they can afford a change like this then I think that's a wound, not a kill.

Things I have seen that are usually indicators (although not always as it can vary from company to company).

* Hiring comes to a halt.

* Senior members begin quitting.

* Transparency becomes infrequent.

* Teams are being dismantled.

I should have started looking for jobs when my hours were cut from full time to part time at a startup I was at. I guess I was expecting a rebound to happen.

A few months later, I messaged the founder asking if he had an ETA for when the work hours would go back to normal. I got laid off after that.

Thanks, what if hiring changes direction..... hiring more finance/ business developers over engineers.

I dont know who posted it originally (here on HN) but there are a lot of signs which may be true for startups as well as for non-startups:

http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom

* Free food disappears * Hiring suddenly stops

Radio silence. As in the founders/management avoiding communication. Huge red flag.

There's a thousand signs, you will always see some. It's not one thing in particular, it's a combination of things. It's the ability to recognize that more and more of those things are happening instead of less and less.

It might be subtle and is similar to what others have said, but if you find the founders running out of steam, losing passion, for the startup, that can be a sign.

More closed doors meetings or offsite meetings

Not a joke: Kicker score gets changed from 10 to 3 points over night

What is a Kicker score

In our company the management changed the score counter for goals on the foosball-table from 10 possible points to a maximum of three.

No sale in over a month

What if you dont have a product out yet.

What is a startup without a product and sales ? Or do you mean someone internally can use the product but it is still not out for more then a month ? Yes, a sign of failure.

There are many startups which make products that take more than a month to make.