🧠 Deep dive — the 6 weapons killing your startup’s progress
Your startup doesn’t need more features. It needs Adderall.
Hey friends 👋
Ever seen a raccoon wash cotton candy?
Ok, hear me out…
It dips the fluff into water, trying to clean it — instinctively, compulsively. But the candy doesn’t get cleaner — the candy gets gone.
Poof 💨
Startups do be like that sometimes: a frenzy of well-meaning effort that feels right in the moment, but somehow leaves you holding… nothing.
You run a “quick” SEO audit.
You rebuild the pricing page (for the fourth time).
You spend six hours reworking your business model slide.
You’re moving. You’re tweaking. You’re polishing.
But you’re not actually getting anywhere.
This is procrastivity — the subtle art of doing fake work that feels like real work so you can avoid the hard, risky, consequential stuff that might actually move the needle.
It’s definitely not laziness.
It’s unprocessed fear hiding behind a Notion dashboard.
Because doing the work that matters — shipping something real, asking for money, confronting silence — carries the risk of failure. And nothing makes a founder crave a color-coded spreadsheet like the looming possibility of public rejection.
This week, we’re diving deep into the high-functioning self-sabotage that kills early traction:
The experiments you justify.
The channels you bounce between.
The features you keep adding.
The busywork you’ve weaponized.
It’s time to talk about the real reason you feel stuck.
It’s time to talk about Weapons of Mass Distraction.
Let’s dive deep 👇
(Ok, deep breath)
I spend a crazy amount of my time talking about how to find traction.
The Traction Lab Venture Accelerator, the Zero to Traction podcast, the Startup Challenge Traction Cohort — not to mention that you’re reading Traction Thinking right now.
Everyone wants to know the secret strategy to finding traction, and no one ever guesses it. But I’m going to spill the tea — right here, right now.
Are you ready? Here it goes:
Focus is the #1 traction strategy.
If your startup feels stuck, it’s usually not because you’re not doing enough.
It’s because you’re doing too much — in too many directions, with too little force. But early-stage traction doesn’t come from tinkering at the edges of five different strategies.
It comes from pushing hard in one direction just long enough to learn something real.
That kind of focus doesn’t just create clarity — it creates signal.
Signal that your customer exists.
Signal that your offer to them resonates.
Signal that the pain is severe enough to pay for.
But the second you start hedging — launching a new feature and a cold outbound campaign and a TikTok channel and a paid pilot — the signal gets drowned in noise.
Because traction doesn’t emerge from variety. It emerges from velocity — sustained movement in a single vector, toward a specific kind of customer, solving a specific kind of problem.
To be everything to everyone is to be nothing to anyone.
That’s why focus isn’t just a productivity hack — it’s a traction strategy.
You don’t need to do more.
You need to choose one, high-leverage hypothesis:
“Our ideal customer has this problem badly enough that they’ll do that — sign up, pay, refer, convert.”
Then point everything at that, in a short burst, for quick insight.
Fail cheap and quick.
And remember JDM’s First Principle of Entrepreneurship:
If you’re not collecting data from the marketplace, you’re probably wasting your time.
I’ve seen a hundred versions of the same stall-out. The details change, but the distractions don’t.
They all trace back to a few common weapons founders keep reaching for — usually with the best intentions.
Let’s break down the most popular ones.
The 6 Weapons of Mass Distraction killing startups
These are the big ones — the things that feel like traction work, but secretly siphon your energy, your runway, and your will to live.
These are the high-functioning, well-intentioned, perfectly rational choices that cause early-stage startups to lose momentum in a fog of motion.
1. Shiny Channel Syndrome
“We haven’t gotten any signups, but maybe TikTok is where our ICP hangs out?”
This is the growth-hacker’s version of panic shopping.
Advice comes from everywhere — advisors, investors, partners, even midnight-fever dreams.
So you try every channel just a little — email, content, paid ads, partner marketing, social, maybe organic — but never go deep enough to learn anything that matters.
Examples:
“Let’s try paid ads”
“We need a viral moment”
“Should we start a podcast?”
“What if we launched on Product Hunt again?”
“Let’s cold DM VCs — maybe they’ll fund us and retweet us”
Why it feels productive: Channels are tangible, and building a funnel feels like building momentum.
But it’s a distraction: Every new channel dilutes your effort. You’re not building a go-to-market capacity — you’re speed-dating distribution.
2. Feature Creep as GTM
“We just need one more feature to unlock growth.”
This is the product builder’s coping mechanism.
When traction doesn’t come, you assume it’s a product gap — and start building again. But you’re not iterating. You’re stalling.
Examples:
“What if we added AI?”
“Let’s add a freemium tier”
“We should gate some features”
“Let’s build onboarding” (for the users you don’t have yet)
Why it feels productive: Shipping is addictive. It’s fast feedback without real risk.
But it’s a distraction: You’re solving imaginary objections for invisible users.
3. The Panic Pivot Playbook
“Maybe our customer is… someone else entirely?”
The traction isn’t coming, so you rotate the whole business like a toddler spinning a globe.
Instead of refining your wedge, you start playing persona roulette.
Examples:
“Maybe we should change our target customer”
“What if we went upmarket?”
“Or downmarket?”
“Let’s try schools. Or solo consultants. Or dentists in Arizona.”
Why it feels productive: It gives you the illusion of progress without doing the hard part — validating the last move.
But it’s a distraction: You can’t learn if you change your customer every time something doesn’t work. That’s not iteration — it’s whack-a-mole.
4. The Overoptimization Olympics
“We should A/B test the pricing page before launch.”
This is when you start polishing the hood ornament on a car that hasn’t left the garage.
Examples:
“Let’s test 12 landing page headlines”
“We need better LinkedIn posts”
“Maybe the problem is our logo”
“Let’s tweak the pricing again”
“We should rebrand”
Why it feels productive: Optimization gives you a dopamine hit — and a beautiful Figma file.
But it’s a distraction: You’re perfecting something that you haven’t even proven deserves to exist.
5. Conference-Driven Development
“We’ve got five events this month — it’s gonna be big for visibility.”
You start believing traction lives in the room, not the product.
You go to mixers, pitch competitions, summits, panels, and showcases. You leave with good vibes and a badge — but not much else.
Examples:
“Let’s pitch at Demo Day”
“Let’s go to more startup events”
“We should apply to another accelerator”
“Maybe we’ll meet someone who can connect us to someone else”
Why it feels productive: You feel busy, visible, and externally validated.
But it’s a distraction: Events are sugar highs. They don’t build businesses — just busyness.
6. Advice-Led Chaos
“An investor told us to pivot. Our advisor said don’t. So we’re doing both.”
You’re not making decisions — you’re curating consensus.
Every loud opinion gets a roadmap item. Every contradictory opinion becomes a new experiment.
Examples:
“Our advisor thinks we need to focus on top-down sales”
“Our mentor said the brand voice is too playful”
“We heard PLG is hot, so we’re trying that too”
“A VC told us to ditch B2C”
Why it feels productive: Feedback feels like fuel. You want to be coachable.
But it’s a distraction: You can’t follow the shouts of ten chefs and still plate a meal. External input is only useful when you already know where you’re going.
If any of these hit a little too close to home — good.
That means you’re awake.
Now let’s talk about how to break the cycle:
The Focused Founder Advantage
If distraction is the default, focus is an unfair advantage.
The founders who actually get traction? They’re not smarter. They’re not better funded. They’re just ruthlessly clear on what not to do.
They don’t chase momentum. They build signal.
They don’t run five plays. They run one play five times.
They pick a wedge — a narrow, testable hypothesis — and aim every ounce of effort at disproving it, as fast as possible.
Here’s what that looks like:
The One Hypothesis Rule: If it doesn’t support your core market hypothesis, it doesn’t belong on your roadmap.
The Traction Stack: Pick one channel, one message, one motion — and go deep before you go wide.
The Anti-Roadmap: Keep a “Not Now” list of tempting distractions. Review it monthly so you can ignore it daily.
Effort-to-Evidence Ratio: Stop spending 10% of your team’s energy chasing 1% of your conviction.
Traction isn’t magic. It’s alignment between what you’re testing, what you’re learning, and what the market actually wants.
It’s potency.
So stop rinsing the cotton candy.
Until next week,
—jdm
PS: I’ll be at the Northern California Venture Conference tomorrow. Will I see you there?