Traction

The second step in Bullseye is running cheap traction tests in the channels that seem most promising.

Traction and product development are of equal importance and should each get about half of your attention. This is what we call the 50 percent rule: spend 50 percent of your time on product and 50 percent on traction.

Making A/B testing a habit (even if you run just one test a week) will improve your efficiency in a traction channel by two or three times.

As billionaire PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel put it: [You] probably won’t have a bunch of equally good distribution strategies. Engineers frequently fall victim to this because they do not understand distribution. Since they don’t know what works, and haven’t thought about it, they try some sales, BD, advertising, and viral... See more

The third and final step in Bullseye is to focus solely on the channel that will move the needle for your startup: your core channel.

From the perspective of getting traction, you can think about working on a product or service in three phases: Phase I—making something people want Phase II—marketing something people want Phase III—scaling your business

even if it is just guesstimating at first. As we mentioned earlier, you should be thinking about only those traction channels and specific strategies that have a chance of moving the needle for your

TARGETS Work through Bullseye. Maximize your chances of getting traction: brainstorm, prioritize, test, and then focus. Do not overlook underutilized channels. In fact, those channels are more likely to be the ones that will work best. Talk to founders a few steps ahead of you. Research how past and present companies in your space and adjacent spac... See more

TARGETS Put half your efforts into getting traction. Pursue traction and product development in parallel, and spend equal time on both. Think of your product as a leaky bucket. Your early traction efforts are pointing you toward the holes worth plugging. Set your growth goals. Focus on strategies and tactics that can plausibly move the needle for y... See more

Before you can set about getting traction, you have to define what traction means for your company. You need to set a traction goal. At the earliest stages, this traction goal is usually to get enough traction to either raise funding or become profitable. In any case, you should figure out what this goal means in terms of hard numbers. How many cus... See more