I remember seeing a retailer that was literally dead in the water the second they IPO'ed then 5x and collapse twice over ten years...they still aren't dead but have collapsed permanently.

Large companies are often able to generate low-quality growth that keeps things going for a few more years. The trick is distinguishing between high and low quality growth.

Tech companies can add more sales people, that is easy, it can keep things going whilst equity markets are open. Quality growth can't be bought like a salesperson. MDB was always seemed anomalous to me, I am not surprised they are down 65% because competition is only increasing. But, either way, the real money is on the long side (predicting which companies are going to fail is a lot easier than predicting success, the problem is funding that position and what happens in the middle because companies have so many ways to fake success until the next bear market).