Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

However, to get to the next traction goal they had to get more mainstream adoption and this next set of users is much less forgiving.

Everything you do should be assessed against your Critical Path. Every activity is either on path or not. If it is not on the path, don’t do it!

You should always have a traction goal you’re working towards. This could be 1,000 paying customers, 100 new daily users, or 10% of your market.

What Lean is to product development, Bullseye is to traction.

The reasoning for why these particular features weren’t necessary initially was that even at 100 million/searches month their userbase was motivated enough by other features to be forgiving of missing these particular ones.

Many entrepreneurs think that if you build a killer product, your customers will beat a path to your door. We call this line of thinking The Product Trap: the fallacy that the best use of your time is always improving your product. In other words, “if you build it, they will come” is wrong.

The path to reaching your traction goal with the fewest number of steps is your Critical Path. It helps to literally draw this path out, enumerating the intermediate steps (milestones) to get to your traction goal. These milestones need not be traction related, but should be absolutely necessary to reach your goal.

We strongly believe that many startups give up way too early. A lot of startup success hinges on choosing a great market at the right time

If you are considering a pivot, the first thing to look for is evidence of real product engagement, even if it is only a few dedicated customers. If you have such engagement, you might be giving up too soon. You should examine these bright spots to see how they might be expanded. Why do these customers take to your product so well? Is there some th