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Ask HN: What is "traction"?
Hi guys, I've heard this buzz word thrown around a lot, mostly in the web 2.0 startup crowd. A vc also asked me once what our plan to "get traction" was.
So, curious to know what your thoughts are about the definition of traction, and how startups go about gaining it. Thanks
- duffbeer703 16y agoIf your car is stuck in snow and ice, throwing some sand or kitty litter under the wheels can help you get out. For a startup, kitty litter probably won't help -- you need an enthusiastic customer, good media coverage, in essence a "break". The barrier to entry for web firms is very low... what makes you different from the next guy? (A: Not what you do, but how.)
- pedalpete 16y agoTo keep it simple, traction is customers or users. How will you get users to your site, what will make them return. What makes it sticky (possibly a connection as to where the term traction came from?). How much traction (visits/users) is probably dependent on your stage and the market. = Now the question to the community is how much traction do you need to show? How many users/visits = traction. Unfortunately, that I can't answer.
- nostrademons 16y agoI think a reasonable definition is "customers/users come seeking you out instead of you having to sell them each individually". You can be profitable without having traction, if you happen to land a couple big contracts through sheer force of salesmanship. (One of my previous employers was like this.) And you can have traction without profits - Twitter is the obvious example. The important thing is whether your users are looking for you to fill a need that they have, or whether you're looking for users to try and figure out what need you're solving. Also, you can have traction and yet still rely on a big salesforce. Oracle's a good example: companies go seeking out Oracle when they have a big database problem, but they still need to talk to a salesperson to figure out how to integrate it with their specific needs and haggle out a price.