Hey friends 👋
Tuesday’s AMA was chaos behind the scenes (Substack fought us, we fought back, it’s up to you who won), but we still tackled three meaty questions from founders navigating classic traction traps. The video’s above — hit play and dig in.
We covered three pre-submitted questions that cut straight to the painful trade-offs founders face when the market doesn’t behave the way your pitch deck says it should:
Pool service SaaS with a seasonality problem – When half your customers vanish for four months, annual contracts start looking real smart. But the real unlock? Finding out what those companies do tackle in the off-season — and whether you can solve those problems too. (Spoiler: it’s probably not snow removal.)
Voice actor marketplace stuck in liquidity hell – 450 actors, 12 gigs in four months. Quality’s great, but clients want instant samples and your actors won’t audition for free. This isn’t a feature problem — it’s a pivot problem. You’ve got two sides of a market with zero overlap. Time to pick a lane.
Insurance adjuster tool with a buyer-user mismatch – Adjusters love your UX. They’d even pay for it. But the insurance companies control the tools, and your users don’t control the budget. Should you sell to the insurers? Build an agentic integration? Or accept defeat? (Hint: it’s not option three.)
A Friday whoopsie…
We skipped Friday this week, sorta… we were at GrowTECH Fest doing a workshop on traction science, and the venue had to break down immediately after the workshop to set up for a wedding, and we were unexpectedly homeless! It was our bad, and we apologize.
But we’ll be back live next Friday at noon PT on LinkedIn and YouTube with fresh questions and zero tolerance for vague pricing strategies.
What’s coming:
We’re live every week:
Bring your questions, your traction woes, your failed features — or submit ahead of time.
And if you’re in Northern California, catch us IRL: Nov 19 (GEW): Full-day event at Carlson Center — 1MC, mentor sprint, live Zero to Traction podcast recording, and AngelCon (six figures in cash on the line)
Want the full schedule? Check the calendar of upcoming Office Hours events →
—Cam & JDM
