Book · ~200 pages

Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares · Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares Paid Intermediate

The full book behind the Bullseye essay above, with nineteen traction channels laid out and worked examples of testing them against a defined customer. Worth the read once you've picked your narrow first customer and need to figure out where to actually find them.

  • There are nineteen distinct acquisition channels, most founders only seriously consider two or three of them.
  • Run structured, cheap tests before scaling any channel, comparing cost, volume, and fit against your specific customer.
  • Split your time roughly evenly between building product and finding traction from day one.

The question it answers

  1. How specific should my target customer be when I'm just starting?

Read with it

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  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. Market size is meaningless until you know exactly who you're for, and Lenny turns that into a concrete, repeatable ICP exercise... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP) Lenny Rachitsky
  4. A clear, operator-written guide from a respected SaaS-analytics company on defining and using an ICP to focus scarce startup... ChartMogul Blog Article · ~12 min read Without an ideal customer profile (ICP), your growth is just guesswork ChartMogul
  5. A PM-turned-founder's playbook that treats defining the right customer and problem as a sequence of concrete hurdles, not... First Round Review Article · ~18 min read 8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear First Round Review
  6. The author of Crossing the Chasm explaining beachhead selection in plain, modern language, the fastest way to absorb the... Lenny's Podcast / Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market Lenny Rachitsky & Geoffrey Moore
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