Office Hours: traction, demos, and the cold start trap

Hey friends 👋

Every Friday at noon Pacific, the Traction Lab goes live to answer startup questions and work through the messy middle of early traction.

This week, we dove into one of the most common founder frustrations:

Why aren’t these early signals turning into momentum?

Here’s what we unpacked:

• Why great demos don’t always convert — and what that’s actually telling you

• How to tell the difference between a sales problem and a traction problem

• What to do when you’ve got loyal beta users… but zero growth

• Why early marketplace models tend to attract only one side (and how to fix it)

• What to do when your cold start problem becomes a warm stall

• How to reframe “failure to close” as a feedback loop—not a dead end

If you’re stuck in demo purgatory, growing one side of a two-sided market, or getting polite “maybes” from everyone you pitch, this one might help you recalibrate.

Join me Fridays at noon PST on LinkedIn for live office hours. Bring your hardest questions and weirdest traction signals — we’ll break them down together.

—jdm