Hey friends 👋
Every Friday at noon Pacific, Cameron and I go live to answer your startup questions and work through the mess of early-stage traction.
This week, we got into the real reason so many experiments lead nowhere:
Not all signals are worth following.
Early-stage founders are under pressure to prove progress. So they run “tests.” But if those tests aren’t grounded in falsifiable hypotheses, they don’t create clarity—they just generate vibes. And vibes aren’t validation.
Here’s what we unpacked:
The difference between a strong signal and a seductive one
Why bad hypotheses create fake confidence
How to know if your experiment is designed to teach you something, or just to look productive
The real purpose of traction: making better decisions, faster
Why most “good” feedback isn’t actually useful (and how to ask better questions)
And how to stop gaslighting yourself with experiments that can’t fail
If you’ve ever finished a cycle of “testing” only to realize you still don’t know what to do next — this one’s for you.
Join us next week for our office hours:
Tuesday at 9am PST on Substack
Thursday at 9am PST on Instagram
Friday at noon PST on LinkedIn
You bring the traction theater. I’ll bring the flashlight.
—jdm
Share this post