đŠ 3-2-1 Traction â the only 3 things I care about in a pitch
Also: finding product-market fit; how to know when customer discovery is complete; the failure of immersive attractions; why PM software sucks; and more.
Hey friend đ
This week, Iâve opted for brevity. Itâs a 2-minute read.
Maybe itâs because Iâm at Disneyland with my 5-month-old. Who knows?
Anyway, hereâs 3-2-1 Traction: 3 ideas from me, two quotes from others, and 1 question to help you focus in your journey to find traction.
3 ideas from me
one: finding product-market fit.
The goal of a startup founder isnât to find product-market fit. Itâs to create the conditions and behaviours which makes getting there inevitable.
two: I only care about 3 things.
When I hear a startupâs pitch, I only care about three things:
Is there a big enough market for this?
How are you going to scale into it?
Why will that succeed?
The rest is costume.
three: when are you done with discovery?
After customer discovery comes validation. But when?
Youâre done âdiscoveringâ when youâve:
Developed a business model hypothesis;
Found customer-problem fit; and
Created a value proposition you can test.
Before that, thereâs little to validate.
2 ideas from others
Felix Salmon in Axios on the failure of the recent wave of immersive attractions:
Experience design generally hasn't kept up with technology. "A lot of these shows are vapid in that they don't have a visceral connection to their customer; there's no emotive way to connect with them," Lionel Ohayon, the founder of Icrave, which designed the Sphere's interiors, tells Axios. "From an entertainment point of view, it's not something people have solved yet.â
Many technologies, from the opera houses of the 19th century through the theme parks of the 20th and the high-tech nightclubs of the 21st, have proved their staying power in terms of being able to attract crowds of people willing to pay good money for a transporting collective experience.
In each case, the art of storytelling has had to be reinvented for the new medium. ⊠When a technology is too new, or scarce, or expensive, it becomes inaccessible to most creators and tends to become bombastic and unpleasantly overwhelming.
Matt Alston in Wired on why all project management software basically sucks:
We also arenât all managers and donât all think in decision trees. The MBA-brained idea that management is a skill that transcends individual disciplines is part of PM softwareâs pitchâthe people selling these services contend that if their software works for their developers, it must be good for everyone. Consistently using the product they buildâalso called dogfoodingâis a point of pride for companies like Asana, but to this reviewer, it is a less ringing endorsement than they might imagine.
Read: you are not your customer.
1 question for you
Setting aside what youâre doing to try to find it, what are you doing to create the conditions for traction within your startup?
Throw me a reply, or leave a comment.
Thatâs it. Short and sweet.
Until next week,
âjdm