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Portfolio (Penguin Random House)

1 resource from Portfolio (Penguin Random House) we point founders to, and the questions each answers.

📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Beginner

When you have no budget, the worst move is to pour your limited time into a channel that was never going to work for your product. Traction gives you all nineteen ways a startup can reach customers and a simple way (the Bullseye framework) to bet on two or three worth testing first. Treat it as a menu and a method, not a verdict: your free channels will come from this list, you just have to find the ones that fit you.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

From Portfolio (Penguin Random House) by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

  • Most startups die from no distribution, not a weak product, so give traction real time, not leftover time.
  • There are nineteen channels (content, SEO, communities, PR, sales, and more), and most founders ignore the ones that would actually work for them.
  • Bullseye: brainstorm across all channels, rank them, then run cheap tests on your top few instead of guessing.
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Answers How do I know if I'm targeting the wrong customer? How do I get my first users for the MVP? How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me? Where do I find the very first people to even talk to about my product? How did real successful startups actually land their first customers? What's the best channel to launch on, Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News, or LinkedIn? How often should I be launching, is once a quarter too much? How do I build a targeted list of the right people to cold email? How do I figure out which distribution channel is right for my startup? Why does everyone say 'distribution is more important than product'? What are the actual distribution channels I can choose from? Should I focus on one channel or spread across many? As an Indian founder, how do I think about distribution for a global product? How do I pick which paid channel to start with? How much budget do I need to test a paid channel properly? How many people should I actually reach out to before I expect to close my first 10 paying customers? I'm a solo technical founder and hate selling. How do I get my first customers without becoming a salesperson? How do I get customers who don't already know me when I have no brand, no audience, and no case studies yet? I have zero marketing budget. What distribution can I actually do for free? How much should I spend on paid ads before deciding they don't work for me? When is it too early to spend on paid ads, and what should I do with that money instead? Referral or paid ads, which should a bootstrapped founder with almost no marketing budget lean on first?
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