Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

Traction comes first

Startups fail not because they can’t build a product, but because they can’t get traction. The authors define traction as customer growth — real, measurable progress in acquiring and retaining users. It’s not optional or secondary; in fact, it’s as essential as the product itself. Without traction, even the best-designed products are doomed to fail.

A key principle from the book is the 50% rule: spend half your time on product, half on traction. That means building in public, engaging early adopters, and constantly testing acquisition methods from day one. By giving traction equal weight to Product, founders ensure that they’re learning what drives actual usage, not just assuming that once the product is finished, growth will come.

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The Bullseye Framework

The authors identify 19 main traction channels — from PR and SEO to trade shows and marketing engineering. The key insight: it's not possible to know in advance which channel will work best, so you need to test broadly and then focus tightly. The Bullseye Framework helps you:

• Brainstorm all channels (outer ring)
• Pick a few channels to test (middle ring)
• Focus on the one that works (bullseye)

This systematic approach replaces guessing with data-driven action. When you find a channel that works, go all-in until it stops delivering — then repeat the process.

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Set a traction goal and critical path

Founders should set a clear traction goal — a concrete metric that signals significant progress (e.g. 1,000 paying users). Then map the critical path: the small number of activities that directly move the needle toward that goal. Anything not on that path is deprioritized. This framework brings clarity and alignment: the whole team knows what matters now.

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Start with a niche

Most successful startups begin by dominating a small niche. This lets you:

• Tailor your product and message
• Build strong word of mouth
• Create loyal early adopters

Once you've nailed your niche, you can expand into adjacent markets. This “niche to broad” strategy is more effective than trying to serve everyone from the start.

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Be relentlessly experimental

Traction comes from a deliberate approach of continuous experimentation. That means:

• Testing ideas quickly and cheaply
• Measuring everything (especially conversion, retention, and acquisition cost)
• Iterating based on data

A/B tests, fast feedback loops, and learning from failed experiments are central to the process. You’re always looking for scalable, repeatable channels — and refining them.

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Retention multiplies traction

Acquiring users is only half the game. If they leave, your growth stalls. That’s why retention — ensuring your product is sticky and valuable — is a key part of traction. Retained users:

• Increase lifetime value
• Refer others
• Generate organic growth

Retention-focused growth loops (e.g. great onboarding, clear value delivery, strong customer support) make your traction sustainable.

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Create a culture of traction

The authors stress that traction is not a job only for the marketing team — it’s a company-wide mindset. Founders must:

• Talk openly about traction goals
• Encourage idea generation across roles
• Celebrate experimentation

By building a culture where traction is a shared responsibility within the company, the marketing team can stay focused on what matters most: customer growth.

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10 Steps to Implement The Book

1. Follow the 50/50 rule

Spend equal time on product development and traction from the start. This ensures that you validate the product early and avoid building features your customers don't really need.

2. Set a traction goal

Define a concrete, time-bound metric (e.g., 10,000 active users in 3 months) that would signify meaningful progress. This sharpens your focus and sets a clear target.

3. Identify the critical path

Determine the handful of activities most likely to directly impact your traction goal. Eliminate or postpone everything else to conserve energy and resources.

4. Brainstorm all 19 channels

Go through each traction channel listed in the book and generate at least one creative growth idea per channel. This opens your mind to multiple opportunities and reduces bias.

5. Select 2–3 channels to test

Choose a few promising channels based on feasibility, cost, and alignment with your target audience. These become the focus of your first growth experiments.

6. Run tests

Implement small, fast, low-cost tests (e.g., $100 ad campaigns, a short webinar series, outreach to influencers) and track specific KPIs. Aim to validate or discard channels quickly.

7. Double down on the winner

Once a channel shows strong early results, concentrate your resources there. Scale what works through optimization, automation, or budget increases.

8. Own a niche

Pick a specific customer segment (e.g., indie game developers, urban dog owners, local yoga studios) and tailor your product and messaging to them. Dominate that space before expanding.

9. Optimize retention

Look at onboarding, support, and feature usage. Reduce churn by understanding where users drop off and improving the overall customer experience.

10. Make traction a company-wide habit

Involve the whole team in growth efforts. Set weekly or monthly traction reviews, encourage experiments, and foster a culture that celebrates learning from both wins and failures.

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Quotes

"Traction is a sign that your company is taking off [...] Traction is basically quantitative evidence of customer demand."

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"The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth."

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"Far too many startups focus on the same channels [...]. In fact, often the most underutilized channels in an industry are the most promising ones."

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"Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don’t have is enough customers."

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"Spend 50 percent of your time on product and 50 percent on traction. [...] If you focus on traction from the beginning, then you can figure out very quickly if you’re on the right track."

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"[Early] interactions will also get you additional data, like what messaging is resonating with potential customers, what niche you might focus on first, what types of customers will be easiest to acquire."

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"[Dropbox:] While developing their product, they tested search engine marketing and found it wouldn’t work for their business. They were acquiring customers for $230 when their product cost only $99. That’s when they focused on the viral marketing traction channel, and built a referral program."

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"You have to define what traction means for your company. You need to set a traction goal."

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"When you constantly test traction channels by sending through a steady stream of new customers, you can tell if your product is getting less leaky over time. In fact this is a great feedback loop between traction development and product development that you can use to make sure you’re on the right track."

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"The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can’t wait for users to come to you."

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"Startup growth happens in spurts. Initially, growth is usually slow. Then it spikes as a useful traction channel strategy is unlocked. Eventually it flattens out [..]. Then you unlock another strategy and you get another spike."

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"That’s why traction channels like community building and viral marketing can be so powerful: they scale with the size of your user base and potential market."

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"Always remember that traction trumps everything."

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"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."

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"If you are just starting out, are you ready to potentially do this for the next decade? In retrospect, a lot of founders feel they picked their company idea too quickly, and they would have picked something they were more passionate about."

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"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."

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"[You] probably won’t have a bunch of equally good distribution strategies. [...] It is very likely that one channel is optimal."

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"The first step in Bullseye is brainstorming every single traction channel. [...] The outer ring is meant to help you systematically counteract your traction channel biases."

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"For each channel, you should identify one decent channel strategy that has a chance of moving the needle."

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"Run cheap traction tests."

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"[We] don’t want you to waste valuable time testing channels sequentially [...]. You can run multiple experiments at the same time."

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"How much will it cost to acquire customers through this channel? How many customers are available through this channel?"

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"When testing, you are not trying to get a lot of traction with a channel just yet. Instead, you are simply trying to determine if it’s a channel that could move the needle for your startup [...] Your main consideration at this point is speed—to get data and to prove your assumptions."

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"The third and final step in Bullseye is to focus solely on the channel that will move the needle for your [business]."

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"At any stage in a startup’s life cycle, one traction channel dominates in terms of customer acquisition."

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"The way this step gets most often messed up by founders is by keeping around distracting marketing efforts in other traction channels [...]. This is additionally confusing because oftentimes focusing on your core channel involves channel strategies that utilize other traction channels. One channel is still dominant, but others feed into it."

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"When we looked at companies really taking off, they were usually employing underutilized channels and channel strategies. [...] Try channels that are unfamiliar because they may be the key to your growth."

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"The traction channel that will ultimately succeed is unpredictable, and time is of the essence. That’s why we focus on successive rounds of quick parallel tests. It’s simple and it works."

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"Andrew Chen, a startup adviser on growth, coined the Law of Shitty Click-Throughs: “Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty click-through rates.”"

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"The company that leverages a newer platform that’s growing quickly will have a significant advantage over companies chasing the same old methods."

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"Another place to look for underutilized channel strategies is in using other traction channels to feed into your core traction channel. … [Y]ou do not want to focus separately on multiple traction channels. However, you can utilize other channels as part of your core channel strategy."

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"[G]et a competitive advantage by acquiring customers in ways your competition isn’t. [O]vercome your biases against particular traction channels."

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"Evernote was one of the first apps available for Android. Because it had some very cool functionality, it was featured in the Android store for six weeks straight, at a time when it was far less crowded than it is now. This gave Evernote hundreds of thousands of new customers, all because it was early and focused its engineering efforts on being first on the platform."

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"Some of the most successful startups grew by making bets on emerging platforms [...]. Betting on new platforms means you’ll likely fail if the platform fails, but it also dramatically lowers the distribution risks."

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