June 11, 2023 The book Traction, by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares has an unstated thesis I find compelling:Comprehensive, grinding, tryhard mediocrity over narrow, stabby, hopeful genius.Or: boil the sales & marketing ocean with these spreadsheets and punchlists (a marketing lifestyle I associate with Penny Arcade’s former business manager with stuff like this).There are lots of quotes from like Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen. This is what one signs up for in a book like this. Also replace “traction” with “sales and marketing”:…spend your time constructing your product or service and testing traction channels in parallel…. We strongly believe that many startups give up way too early… You should always have an explicit traction goal you’re working toward.…The importance of choosing the right traction goal cannot be overstated. Are you going for growth or “profitability, or something in between? If you need to raise money in X months, what traction do you need to show to do so? These are the types of questions that help you determine the right traction goal.Once that is defined, you can work backward and set clear quantitative and time-based traction subgoals, such as reaching one thousand customers by next quarter or hitting 20 percent monthly growth targets. Clear subgoals provide accountability. By placing traction activities on the same calendar as product development and other company milestones, you ensure that enough of your time will be spent on traction.It feels a little dumb pulling out quotes, but also I get security from seeing it not be overthought:And then the spreadsheets. There are pictures of spreadsheets, and descriptions of columns in spreadsheets. It’s great!“…we encourage you to be as quantitative as possible, even if it is just guesstimating at first.”And the 19 strategies:There’s not even a conclusion! Just an acknowledgement and an appendix with specific suggested goals for each category in case the short chapters weren’t boiled enough. It’s not hard, it just takes work. Discuss this with me on Twitter or suggest a change. Related Posts:
