Traversing the Traction Gap

by Bruce Cleveland, Wildcat Venture Partners

Overview

Traction. Startups Need It. Learn How To Get It.

Vision, groundbreaking ideas, total commitment, and boundless enthusiasm characterize most startups, but they require capital to go from promising product to scalable business. More than 80 percent of all early-stage startups fail. Most of them can build a product, but the vast majority stumble when it comes time to take those products to market due to poor “market engineering” skills.

Traversing the Traction Gap exposes the reasons behind that scary failure rate and provides a prescriptive how-to guide, focused specifically on market engineering techniques, so startups can succeed.

The go-to-market hurdle is insurmountable to many startups. Just when they most need to establish a foothold in the market, they run short on time and money. This is the Traction Gap, that period of time introducing a new product into the marketplace and being able to scale it during a rapidly closing window of opportunity. Traversing the Traction Gap is a practical guidebook for navigating the tumultuous early life of a startup. Based on real-life examples, the advice from Cleveland and the members of the Wildcat Venture Partners team provides a roadmap and metrics for succeeding where others have failed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635766240
Publisher:	Radius Book Group
Publication date:	02/21/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, focuses on investments in startups developing software solutions that enable digital transformation across business, government, and education markets. Bruce was the first investor and a board member of Marketo, which held an IPO in 2013 and was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2016 for $1.8 billion. Bruce held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing at Apple, AT&T, Oracle and Siebel Systems. Bruce enjoys the challenge of creating new companies and navigating new markets. He is committed to sharing his knowledge and experience through the Traction Gap Framework™, which helps entrepreneurs navigate the critical go-to-market period.

Founded in 2015, Wildcat Venture Partners invests in early stage technology companies. The Wildcat team brings decades of entrepreneurial experience, venture experience, and deep domain expertise to help startups effectively navigate through the Traction Gap.

Table of Contents

Foreword Geoffrey Moore ix

Part I Learning the Concepts: The Traction Gap Framework 1

Introduction 3

1 Slide 29 11

Part II Getting Three: Slides 1-28 "Go-to-Product" 35

2 Applying the Traction Gap Framework 37

3 The Road to Category King 63

4 Getting to Initial Product Release 89

Part III Navigating the Gap: Slide 29's "Go-to-Market" 135

5 Getting to Minimum Viable Product 137

6 Getting to Minimum Viable Repeatability 171

7 The Final Sprint to Minimum Viable Traction 207

Part IV Scaling to Success: After Slide 30 "Go-to-Scale" 239

8 Beyond the Traction Gap 241

Appendix 253

Endnotes 263

Acknowledgements 265

Index 271

Editorial Reviews

Traction. That was the word that haunted their fund-raising lives. What is it? Why is it so elusive? How do you get it? How do you demonstrate it? These are the questions that the Traction Gap Framework helps management teams and their investing sponsors address.”

—Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win & Venture Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners



“The Lean Launchpad class was developed to help entrepreneurs go from an idea to a product that customers want. The Traction Gap is a much-needed framework for the next step in that progression, taking a minimally viable product and growing it to sales repeatability and traction.”

— Steve Blank, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Startup Owner’s Manual



“This is the exact book I would use to teach a class on scaling a company. It focuses on the core business areas entrepreneurs need to professionalize as they go from a pure startup to a solid, growing company—people, product, revenue, and systems. More than that, it gives them milestone metrics based on successful companies to help them gauge their progress and communicate better with investors.”

—Waverly Deutsch, Clinical Professor and Academic Director of University-Wide Entrepreneurship Content at University of Chicago Booth School of Business



“Bruce is one of the leading experts on scaling startups, especially in the enterprise. Traversing the Traction Gap packages up years of lessons and contains exactly the type of information and guidance that would have accelerated our growth early on!”

—Aaron Levie, CEO and Founder, Box



“All early-stage startups are faced with the challenge of traversing the Traction Gap. To make it, they need a well-defined strategy that addresses a combination of product, team, revenue and operational systems.”

—Jon Miller, Co-Founder, Marketo, and CEO, Engagio

From the Publisher