traction Archives - Startup Economist

You Don’t Need Traction. You Need to Understand Why They Say You Do.

Friday, 13 June 2025 by Paul O'Brien

There’s a special kind of eye twitch that founders get the 37th time they hear, “We’d love to invest, but you need more traction.” It’s a vague hand-wave of a dismissal that sounds helpful, but is really just cowardice in a hoodie. And when you ask what kind of traction they mean, they blink like

Start Up Right: Know Your Potential Customers

Tuesday, 22 May 2018 by Paul O'Brien

Every entrepreneur struggles with the idea of traction. The word we hear uttered by investors, mentioned by advisors, cited in blog posts, and the holy grail of entrepreneurship, traction, really means a lot of different things to any number of people. And still, as we venture forth, we’re constantly focused on customers and what I’ve noticed

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Why Tech Startup Investors Expecting Revenue are Wrong

Monday, 04 April 2016 by Paul O'Brien

A far too frequently overheard conversation in the startup community goes something like this: “Apparently neither Instagram nor Snapchat had paying customers while receiving both seed and series A funding?! I couldn’t believe it. Investors, advisors, and incubators these days are constantly trumpeting that a monetization model (or at least an anticipated revenue trajectory) is

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