Choice Words on Traction

"Growth Curve" via thearmadagroup.com

Traction is real customers. If you charge for your product, it’s real paying customers. If your product is free, it’s a real user base. In other words, traction is a signal that your team can produce real results in a real market.

You don’t need much traction to entice investors. In fact, people like myself prefer just a little because when you have a lot your valuation will probably be too high. The ideal scenario from my perspective is you already got a bit of traction, and you know how to get more with some investment.

You played around with various traction verticals and you identified a few promising ones that brought in your early customers. Now you just need $x to experiment more heavily with those channels. That’s a compelling story.

I should also point out that once you have traction, you may not need investors at all.

Via Gabriel Weinberg - "Traction Trumps Everything"