Traction trumps everything

Traction is the lifeblood of any startup, particularly for B2B SaaS companies in the deeptech industries. This guide, based on the principles laid out in "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, will help founders understand the importance of traction, how to think about traction at the early stage of startup.

Introduction to Traction 

To unlock 10x traction, experiment and determine the one that works best for your specific business. Among the 19 available traction channels, the most under-utilized ones in the industry are often the most promising. Regularly testing different channels and strategies can help you discover untapped potential and gain a competitive advantage over other businesses.For example, a cybersecurity SaaS company might find that content marketing and webinars are particularly effective for generating leads, while an AI-driven customer support tool might see better results from targeted social media ads

Traction Experimentation

Many startup failed because of missing traction or I might say inability to explore traction channels systematically. This guide is designed for founders to provide way to have understanding of traction and how to go about it.Traction trumps everything!

Founders Map To Unlock 10x Traction In Early Stage Startup

Startup growth happens in spurts

Startup’s take off because the founders make them take off. For that take off, founders shouldn’t wait for users to come. Founders have to go out and get them

Traction is essentially growth, and it is the pursuit of traction that defines a startup. Successful startups have customers and traction along with a product, while unsuccessful ones have a product only. Traction is evidence of a good distribution strategy and provides quantitative proof of customer demand.In the early stages of a startup, traction is crucial for attracting investors, as it demonstrates that there is a viable market for the product. Investors are more likely to support a startup with solid traction, as they can extrapolate the current growth into future success.continue…

Importance Of Traction

Startups that achieve sustainable product engagement growth will find it difficult to be ignored by investors, regardless of the size of their current user base. Achieving traction is essential for several reasons:<ul><li>Market validation: Traction demonstrates that there is a genuine need for the product & that customers are willing to pay for it</li><li>Team motivation: As the startup grows, traction provides motivation for the team to continue working hard & striving for success</li><li>Fundraising: Investors are more likely to invest in a startup with traction, as it is indicative of future growth & success</li></ul>

Traction Is A Success Indicator 

Startups should spend half their time on product development and half on traction efforts. By incorporating feedback from traction efforts, founders can build the right product, prioritize customer segments, and refine their acquisition strategy.<ul><li>Cold customers can inform startups about missing features and broken experiences, leading to improvements in product stickiness. </li><li>Warm customers, on the other hand, provide valuable feedback that can help refine messaging and improve the overall product offering.</li></ul>To achieve optimal traction, it's essential to experiment with various traction channels.

Thinking About Traction 

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Put half of your effort in building traction </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Align building traction and product</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Set up clear traction goals and focus on strategies and tactics that can move the needle.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Learn what growth numbers potential investors respect</li><li class="ql-align-justify">List and iterate over 19 traction channels with experimentation mindset</li></ul>

Actionable Insights

Traction is a quantitative evidence of customer demand

Understanding and implementing principles of traction is essential for early stage deeptech startup founders. By understanding the traction, recognising the importance of traction and thinking strategically about it can set you up for success and unlock sustainable 10x growth in the competitive landscape of today

Conclusion 

Understanding traction and implementing it systematically has given us an competitive advantage and unparalleled growth.

Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction.  Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely.   As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.   Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers (or, for a free service, users). That’s called traction, and it makes everything else easier—fund-raising, hiring, press, partnerships, acquisitions. Talk is cheap, but traction is hard evidence that you’re on the right path. Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and how to pick the right ones for your business. It draws on inter-views with more than forty successful founders, including Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (reddit), Paul English (Kayak), and Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot). You’ll learn, for example, how to:   ·Find and use offline ads and other channels your competitors probably aren’t using ·Get targeted media coverage that will help you reach more customers ·Boost the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by automating staggered sets of prompts and updates ·Improve your search engine rankings and advertising through online tools and research Weinberg and Mares know that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution; every startup faces unique challenges and will benefit from a blend of these nineteen traction channels. They offer a three-step framework (called Bullseye) to figure out which ones will work best for your business. But no matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.

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Since 2008, I've been the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. Our private search engine is #4 in the U.S., Germany, Australia and dozens of other countries, answering over 9 billion queries in 2018.I also co-authored Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models (Penguin Portfolio, 2019). Previously I co-authored Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth (Penguin Portfolio, 2015). Before DuckDuckGo, I founded other Internet-related companies. My formal education is from MIT (B.S. Physics, '97-01; M.S. from the Technology and Policy Program '03-05).

Gabriel Weinberg

Justin is the co-author of Traction Book: a Startup Guide to Getting Customers. Before writing the book, he ran growth at developer tools company Exceptional Cloud Services, which was acquired by Rackspace in 2013. Previously, he also co-founded a 3D printing company that was acquired in late 2011, and has consulted for startups and some of the most popular websites on the internet. He's also an active mentor at 500 Startups, a seed-stage investment fund and accelerator. 

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Point 1: Obsess Over Numbers