[claudiulodro]

If you/investors are not satisfied with the current growth of the company but the company is profitable and not in danger of shutting down, it seems like it would be a wise move to invest the profits towards R&D to create some sort of product that may have better growth. You'd have the benefit of "infinite runway" for your next product and the investors have a chance at getting their money back.

[hn_throwaway_99]

On the other hand, there was recently and article in Forbes about a tech billionaire who saw this pattern (small tech companies with one main successful product that were then pouring money into other speculative as-yet unsuccessful products) and built a fortune doing the exact opposite: he'd buy the companies, basically stop all investment in new products (meaning lay most people off and outsource the maintenance to cheaper countries) and milk the maintenance revenue stream until it basically died. I think of it as "the world's most depressing business model", but it was definitely highly profitable.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2018/11/19/how-a-my...

[pcunite]

Interesting. I found it discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18516584

[pandapower2]

Random idea.

If you have profits sufficient to fund R&D you could also potentially approach your investors about buying them out with those profits. Something like "It has become apparent that this company is never going to provide the growth you are after. Instead, every quarter the company with pay you $X in exchange for N of your shares. After two years the company will have bought back the last of your shares and you will have twice your investment. We enjoy running the company and intend to do that for the foreseeable future despite the limited growth."