There are not that many Basecamps though. If a niche is competitive enough then the eat-or-be-eaten law tends to be applied quite rigorously and one way to avoid being eaten (or at least, to avoid being eaten on someone else's terms) is to show healthy growth. That's why month-to-month growth is a very good metric to gauge a start-ups eventual success.

Think of Basecamp as a very successful exception. And there is nothing wrong with that, in fact I'd like it if there were many more companies like that. In NL we have an interesting IT cooperative that I was an early investor in that is moderately successful, nowhere near as successful as Basecamp but at least they have tried. The remainder all seems to follow the usual patterns.

Stagnation makes you into a sitting target rather than a moving one and those are much simpler to dispatch so better keep moving.