The Greek myth of Icarus warns about the danger of flying too close to the sun. But as Niki Van den Broeck pointed out at PR_D_CT DAY 2025 in Ghent, product leaders at scaleups face a more nuanced version of that dilemma. Flying too low is equally fatal. The real challenge is finding the middle course, and that path is harder and slower than anyone wants to admit.
Drawing on four years at Lighthouse, the travel and hospitality technology company formerly known as OTA Insight, Niki presented a candid post-mortem of what happens when a company with perfect product-market fit chases aggressive growth targets. Six acquisitions, fifteen distinct solutions, and a ballooning product portfolio later, the numbers told a sobering story: churn climbing from 10% to 16%, and NPS dropping below 70 for the first time in seven years.
For the product leaders in the audience, many navigating their own growth-versus-quality trade-offs, the talk offered a rare, data-rich look at the consequences of prioritizing expansion over user value.
Original Presentation Slides
Download the slides from this talk as presented at the gathering.
