Podcast
Traction Lab Podcast
Hosted by JDM and Cameron Law · EN
The Traction Lab Podcast is a light-hearted, science-based weekly to help first-time founders go from fuzzy idea to real traction with honest insights, tactical experiments, tons of snark, and zero startup BS.
zerototraction.substack.com
zerototraction.substack.com
17episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
You have to earn scale
5d ago00:45:10Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋Every founder wants the J-curve — up and to the right, forever. But that chart has a boring flat part at the beginning that most founders try to skip. That’s the part where you figure out what actually works, prove it can happen again, and then pour gas on it. Skip it and you’re not scaling a growth engine. You’re just spending money faster.This week we dig into one of our core frameworks: predictable, repeatable, scalable. In that order. Always in that order. The key question: can you tell the difference between what worked and what just happened to work that one time? Because your entire engine rests on that answer.Three founders are convinced they’re ready to scale. One’s averaging two new customers a month (a number that might be doing some heavy lifting to hide the real variance). One has a genuinely tight LinkedIn playbook — but now wants to hand it to an SDR and go explore a new segment. And one had three TikTok videos go viral and wants to triple the content team to make the magic happen again. We rate all three on our conviction scale, and nothing gets above a six.Cameron recommends a detective show. JDM withdraws a previous recommendation entirely.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 Introduction02:15 Predictable, Repeatable, Scalable05:30 Scenario 1: SaaS returns processing platform12:45 Scenario 2: Warehouse safety compliance25:00 Scenario 3: Consumer fintech / TikTok40:00 Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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Don’t avoid your customers.
2w ago00:30:13Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You know the pattern.* January: idea.* February: market research.* March: wireframes, logo, landing page.* April: four customer convos. Two said routing is a pain point.Ouch — that’s just a museum of artifacts nobody bought a ticket to.This week, we break down Time to Customer: the single most important velocity metric for early-stage founders, and the one most likely to make you squirm.It’s a simple measurement — how long from “I have an idea” to “I tested it with a real customer”? Turns out, that gap is where most founders hide. Cameron and JDM dig into why we delay, what “progressivity” looks like in the wild, and what it actually means to have a bias toward getting in front of customers.We run three scenarios through the TTC lens — from a dog grooming app that spent three months in pre-production before a single customer call, to a churn prediction startup that got a prospect to ask “what would it cost to get this every month?”, to a compliance platform that built an entire outbound playbook before sending their first cold email.tbh… conviction scores were grim, but we left every founder with a clear path forward. We hope.And in frivolous Thoughts:* Cameron caught the Buffalo Traffic Jam live at a 200-person DC venue (Bands in Town is the app you didn’t know you needed), and* JDM makes a strong case for Sofia Isella as the reigning queen of dark pop.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 Introduction02:15 Time to Customer05:30 Scenario 1: Mobile dog groomer routing app12:45 Scenario 2: SaaS churn prediction platform25:00 Scenario 3: Home healthcare compliance training40:00 Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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Are you pivoting or just stacking assumptions?
2w ago00:39:49Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋Here’s what a pivot is not: changing your messaging, tweaking your pricing, or trying a new ad channel.It’s also not torching the company and starting over.A pivot is what happens when data invalidates a core assumption — and there are really only three categories worth changing: your audience, your product, or how you distribute and capture value.That’s the framework this week. We map the three pivot categories, explain how the 10 named pivot types actually fit inside them, and then do what we do — put the theory through three real startup scenarios that are very much not doing it right.From an AI writing tool that quietly discovered its best customers were using it for something completely different, to a yoga marketplace simultaneously pivoting its customer, its product, and its monetization model (we both gave it a one), to a SaaS dashboard whose founders accidentally built the right feature inside the wrong product — each one gets rated on our conviction scale.In Frivolous Thoughts: Cameron barely survives a security line in Salt Lake City, and jdm goes deep on the agentic AI wild west — including a tool that lets you hire a zero-human CEO for your startup.Please don’t do that for your actual startup.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 Introduction02:15 What is a pivot? (and the three categories)07:45 Scenario 1: AI writing tool — customer need vs. segment pivot15:15 Scenario 2: Yoga marketplace — the danger of stacking pivots25:00 Scenario 3: SaaS review dashboard — the zoom in pivot34:00 Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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Clean your pipeline: polite nos vs real yeses
3w ago00:33:39Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You’ve got 22 prospects in the pipeline. Eight firms said they’ll start after tax season. Five want a follow-up next quarter. Three need a case study first. And you’re feeling really good about it.You shouldn’t.“Sounds great” isn’t a yes — it’s a soft no with a future date attached. The say-do gap is real, and most founders are snorting hopium instead of closing it. This week, Cameron and JDM dig into the TEAM Framework: Time, Effort, Access, Money. It’s one of Traction Lab’s most-used tools, built specifically to separate genuine intent from enthusiasm that evaporates the moment you ask for a commitment.From an accounting startup coasting on good demo vibes (combined score: one) to an insurance SaaS asking all the right questions but still afraid to ask for money, we run three startup scenarios through the conviction gauntlet and rate each one. The third founder learned from failure and corrected course — which earns real respect, even with some method questions still on the table.In frivolous thoughts: Cameron’s deep in Justified season six, and JDM’s recommending Honey Dijon’s The Nightlife for the next time your AI agents are doing your work for you.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMPS: A mea culpa. This episode was supposed to drop on Saturday, but we had technical difficulties. We blame our AI agents for not doing our jobs better.Timestamps00:00 Introduction02:00 The TEAM Framework (Time, Effort, Access, Money)06:30 Scenario 1: Workflow automation for accounting firms12:45 Scenario 2: Insurance agent SaaS — asking right, but dodging money19:30 Scenario 3: D2C analytics dashboard — learning from failure29:30 Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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How we evaluate traction
May 200:38:55Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋Six paying customers. $4,800 MRR. The founder already knows which two to discount. Same evidence. Cameron gives it an 8. JDM gives it a 6. That’s the conversation the Strength of Evidence Matrix is built for.This week, we dig into the Strength of Evidence Matrix — one of the core Traction Lab tools. It evaluates your traction on two axes: how robust is the signal (from interest to intent), and how independent is the source (from affiliated to cold). Most founders count their evidence. This framework grades it — and most of the time, the grade is a lot worse than it looks.From a pet emergency app drowning in warm surveys, to a background check SaaS with real revenue but one cold customer keeping the whole signal honest, to a B2B platform that made it from their rolodex all the way to a cold annual contract — we run three scenarios through the matrix and rate each on the conviction scale. There’s even a JDM-Cameron split on the last one.JDM’s three-year Lord of the Rings marathon is almost over. Cameron just watched the GuLP team take fifth place and $10K in Minneapolis.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMResources:* High Conviction Happy Hour, August 27th* Traction Lab Venture SchoolTimestamps00:00 - Introduction02:15 - Strength of Evidence Matrix05:30 - Scenario 1: Pet emergency vet app12:45 - Scenario 2: Background check SaaS25:00 - Scenario 3: B2B CPG broker platform40:00 - Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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Weekly AMA: what investors actually need
Apr 2901:11:27Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You’ve had the good conversations. Coffee chats that ended with “this is really interesting.” Followers who DM you to say they can’t wait. And when you go to investors, they pass.Because interest and evidence are two completely different things.This week, JDM and Cameron are joined by Nikki Sims — operator, VC fund veteran, and someone who’s actually seen what happens when founders confuse the two. In a special format, we invited founders from the Traction Lab Venture School to join us on the livestream to ask their questions.We covered traction signals that matter in historically offline industries, what happens to your roadmap when you land a 227-location enterprise deal, why your TAM slide is probably lying to investors without you realizing it, what to do when your market has a literal expiration date, and how to think about funding a hard goods business when VC math doesn’t apply.Nikki didn’t hold back. Neither did the guys. It’s the kind of honest investor feedback you usually only get if you already know someone.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 - Introduction & Nikki Sims05:00 - Traction in offline markets (AgTech / game birds)18:00 - When your market has an expiration date24:30 - The enterprise trap: SMB to 227 locations32:00 - Funding a hardware business (not a SaaS)51:00 - TAM slides: bottoms-up or bust58:30 - Biotech buy vs. build decisions1:02:30 - Channel strategy for construction tech This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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This TAM is just a snort of hopium
Apr 2500:30:55Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You know the pattern — founder shows up with a deck, flips to the TAM slide, and there it is: $53 billion… $67 billion… any enormous number with a B at the end. And everyone in the room nods like it means something.It usually doesn’t.This week JDM goes solo (Cameron’s out representing the ecosystem and cheering at a pitch competition — we’ll forgive him) to dig into one of his all-time founder pet peeves: the TAM.Not the concept — the lazy, hopium-laced, percentage-game version that shows up in almost every pitch deck. The one that mistakes the market your customers are in for the market your product is in. The one that picks 0.1% because it makes the math look reasonable, not because it means anything.From a Slack bot claiming a slice of the wrong pie, to a procurement platform that actually did the math (mostly), to an AI tutoring app that averaged its way to a $67B fantasy, JDM runs the conviction scale on three real TAM claims and calls out every shortcut along the way.For his lone frivolous thought, he recommends Ben McKenzie’s documentary Everyone Is Lying to You for Money — a deep dive into crypto with strong opinions and receipts to match.As always, thanks for listening.—JDM & CamTimestamps00:00 - Introduction02:15 - TAM: what the slide is supposed to answer (and doesn’t)05:30 - Scenario 1: The Slack status bot12:45 - Scenario 2: Food manufacturer procurement platform25:00 - Scenario 3: AI tutoring app for K-1240:00 - Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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Do your investor updates secretly suck?
Apr 1800:42:00Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You’ve seen the email before:Subject: “Huge month!!”Body: 10,000 users, engagement through the roof, three new features shipped, featured in a newsletter. No revenue. No retention breakdown. No ask. And somehow, you think that’s an investor update.This week, JDM and Cameron break down what investor updates are actually for — and why the founders sending the flashiest ones are often the ones with the least to show.A good update isn’t a highlight reel. It’s a signal:* Here’s the one metric that matters right now;* Here’s what’s working and what isn’t; and* Here’s exactly what we need from you.That’s it.Do that consistently, and you’re building trust long before anyone writes a check.Then comes the game! Three realistic scenarios, scored on the conviction scale:* A SaaS tool drowning in vanity metrics and no ask (a very generous two).* A dental practice management startup with actual numbers, actual churn honesty, and a specific ask that almost got there (a strong eight).* A consumer mental health app with 150K downloads, no paying customers, and a premium tier with results too “encouraging” to share yet (another two).And it’s a conviction sandwich!But a Keto edition… the good stuff is in the middle.Frivolous thoughts this week: JDM got a YouTube Music recommendation he didn’t ask for and absolutely needed; and Cameron walked out of a Sacramento record shop with some Cat Stevens vinyl.Turns out the thread between grunge, riot-grrl, punk, and folk peace anthems is stronger than you’d think.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 Introduction02:15 What is an investor update (and why most are facades)05:30 What to actually include: the five elements13:30 Scenario 123:15 Scenario 233:15 Scenario 337:30 Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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When your best customer is also your biggest threat
Apr 1500:48:34Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You’ve got 43 customers using your product for free, a pilot converting at 4 out of 11, and a franchisor who just announced they’re building your product themselves—for free.This week’s office hours was a live collision of founders at very different stages, all running into the same underlying problem: they’re optimizing for the wrong thing at the wrong time.JDM and Cameron tackle five questions live from YouTube and LinkedIn:* a funeral home consolidator mid-pricing negotiation* a B2C wellness app chasing a launch before knowing who they’re selling to* a CrossFit gym SaaS getting sherlocked by its own franchisor* a baby sleep consultant product that discovered its pilot structure too late* a surf school booking tool trying to solve seasonality before it’s solved willingness to pay.We break down enterprise pricing psychology, the trap of logo-hunting, why “stoned beach dudes” is not a customer segment problem, and how a transaction-based revenue model might untangle a seasonal billing headache.We recorded in person again, the rain is visible through the window, Cameron’s deep into Justified, and JDM is watching Harrison Ford gracefully exit Shrinking.And, as always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 Intro 02:15 Live Q: When to hold firm vs. concede on pricing10:30 Q2: Building momentum before MVP launch20:00 Q3: Getting sherlocked by the franchisor25:00 Q4: 4 out of 11 pilot conversions and what the split actually means30:30 Q5: Union workers who don’t buy their own software36:00 Q6: Seasonality, and when to charge43:30 Frivolous Thoughts: the future of TV (which is now) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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You built it. Now what?
Apr 1100:56:51Tap to summarizeHey friends 👋You have the domain expertise. You have the product. You might have even used AI to vibe-code the whole thing in a weekend. But here’s where most technical founders hit a wall — not because the product is wrong, but because getting your first paying customer is a completely different skill set than building the thing. And it’s harder than it looks.This week, we dig into Tech Timmy — Traction Lab’s name for the technical or domain-expert founder who builds first and asks “now what?” later. We talk through what makes this archetype fascinating, the cruel irony of their situation, and why the very channels they gravitate toward (SEO, Reddit, Product Hunt launches) are almost guaranteed to fail them at this stage.Then we run three Tech Timmy scenarios through our conviction scale — a browser extension for Slack productivity, a niche inventory tool for specialty coffee roasters, and an AI cover letter generator with some genuinely alarming freemium math. One gets an enthusiastic eight. One gets a swift and unapologetic one. Cameron earns the crown.We also coined the Conviction Chasm — the space between “we’re somewhat in” and “we’re fully in” — which is immediately more threatening than it probably needs to be.Frivolous thoughts this week: Artemis II sent humans further from Earth than anyone has ever been, which is objectively incredible. And Cameron watched Better Off Ted.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 - Introduction02:15 - The Tech Timmy: who they are and why it matters09:15 - The cruel irony of the technical founder12:45 - Scenario 1: Slack summarizer browser extension28:00 - Scenario 2: Inventory tool for coffee roasters40:00 - Scenario 3: AI cover letter generator50:00 - Frivolous Thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com
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