How To Pitch Early Traction to Venture Investors like a Boss! | Dose 020

[@stevebarsh7727]

I hope founders and startups find this useful. So many need to do a better job describing their traction and not talk about "faux traction" and/or mischaracterize their traction trying to make things look better than they are. The better thing to do is be honest and accurate with your traction, talk about how it's changing over time, and then where this is all headed. Hope you find this helpful! If you have questions, please post them in the commewnts.-- Steve

[@stevebarsh7727]

@Marilyn Crawford If you are pre-revenue, you need to talk about what traction you do have if it's not "revenue" traction. E.g. have you talked to 30 potential customers, tested your pricing with them, and what was their reaction? ("We talked with 30 customers and 90% said they would pay $1000 per month for the value we would deliver."). Or maybe you did a Google Adwords or Facebook ads test and found that with an average of $5 CPC, once the potential customer landed on your site, 10% clicked on "sign me up for early access where I'll get 30 days free and then pay $100 per month). So figure out what traction you can point to and talk about it in detail, and quantitatively. Hope this helps. - Steve

[@g2k222]

I’m so surprised how few people subscribe to this. I’m sharing with my entire entrepreneurial program.

[@egredminder]

When searching for thoughts on traction at the seed round of funding, I found this to be point on. Looking forward to consuming more content.

[@graemespeak8373]

Love these Dreamit Dose videos. Well done guys. Solid gold.

[@stevebarsh7727]

Glad you like them and are finding them helpful. Thanks for watching!

[@nelsonnigel4775]

@@stevebarsh7727 well done, thank you

[@nicolesanter799]

Just love these videos!! Please keep them coming, so helpful!

[@abdullahchaudary1445]

OMG.... soooo insightful... best video on pitch I have seen. Please keep more content like this coming

[@amorosogombe9650]

I'm actually happy to see VCs seeing through BS traction. I have seen companies getting funded in Kenya on traction I knew to be impossible in this ecosystem and industry. They were expat founded and we were local. It was unbelievable but eventually, the VCs cottoned on, took them a few years first though!

[@basedpatriotLT]

Can you say an example of the BS traction that was sold to vc, and what was your reasoning in knowing that promised traction was not possiblem

[@stephenazeh8796]

Subscribed 👍 Thanks a bunch

[@pedroapetri]

Hello Steve, thank you for the video! About the topic "Focus on traction for one product", should I even show informations anywhere on my pitch deck about the other products that we are working on, and their revenue? Greatings from Brazil!

[@stevebarsh7727]

Thanks for watching Pedro. Sure, you can talk about traction and revenue for other products and other parts of your business. Just be careful to clearly label the traction for each product.

[@pedroapetri]

@@stevebarsh7727 Got it! Thanks!

[@DreamItVentures]

Got a startup? Join Dreamit's Rising Founder Program for current and aspiring founders! www.dreamit.com/rising-founder-program

[@zwitterion1]

I thought it would be some kind of vetting waitlist for the accelerator! lol

[@DreamItVentures]

@@zwitterion1 Thanks for checking it out! Our Rising Founder program is a great way for us to connect and stay in touch with the entrepreneurial community. There will be live events and content specifically for that program more and more in the months to come. Hope you can join!

[@Maddo_Aussie]

Steve, Hi from down under! I have been watching and learning great tips and knowledge from your videos, they are an absolute goldmine of info for entrepreneurs! Thanks for sharing!!

[@darkspark4132]

We have pitching today, that's helped us lot thank you from India

[@zwitterion1]

OMG, love this!

[@stevebarsh7727]

Thanks for watching and glad you liked it!

[@verntremble2890]

Great information, Steve! So helpful to see the Pre product traction kpis. I can prove these metrics without hypotheticals or assumptions.

[@martinrandolph8220]

Thanks Steve. Truly a value watch. I thought 'traction' was a chicken and an egg topic that i thought would never hatch for me until now. This whole time I had been over complicating shit.

[@slycer10]

Fantastic video!! Great pointers on how to present the traction at different stages!! 👌👌

[@davedsilva]

Lousy 4X4 off roading video, but really good for my quantum tech startup. Really enjoyed it. Bloopers at end humanize you. Will try to adapt your advice. We have one client, a port, who may expect us to increase their $10B revenue by 10%, then resell us to other seaports. Any suggestions?

[@jonagonzalez6706]

Thanks Steve for this is useful content!

[@stevebarsh7727]

Jonatan Gonzalez My pleasure. Thx for watching!

[@rowlandreeves5476]

Great advice, thank you.

[@MarkAlex]

Thanks a lot Steve.. your videos are very informative. Just one question, what could be the traction if I’m in the early stage and the purpose of presenting my pitch deck is to get accepted by the incubator….. The startup is not yet established and I need to meet a committee to present my business idea for startup program? Thanks again

[@vishnuch1476]

Hello Steve, a quick question. Would you consider the lines of code written or the features and functions built as traction during the product development stage? And if I can request a video, could you make a video about Dos and Don'ts in cold emails and cold calls to investors? Thanks again!

[@stevebarsh7727]

Thx for watching @Vishnu! Look, if you are still building the product, one thing I would stress is how many users or potential customers you've spoken with before the product is even done, that have given you a strong, positive indication that this solves a big problem for them or provides a big, unique benefit. That does NOT always work - particularly if you are creating something groundbreaking that's b2c. So hard to do with Snapchat e.g., But I find for 90%+ of business it's important to get customer feedback super early (before the product is built) and you can talk about that as a type of traction. If you don't have that, you could talk about code or delivered functions like traction, but most investors won't' give it much weight. And perhaps you don't want to talk about it as "traction." Instead, talk about "where you are" in getting the product to market. Hope that helps.

[@stevebarsh7727]

And we'll keep in mind your idea about email do's and don't. Here is something we shot years ago about being an "Email "Email Ninja." It's not a "Dose" so much longer. Watch it at 1.5x speed and you'll get a good understand of how we think about the topic and it should have some solid ideas for you. -- Steve. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZCXkmewr6-Sm9E

[@stevebarsh7727]

Final point - if you find our content helpful, posts to social (e.g Twitter and Linked) linking to the content are greatly appreciated. And if you tag me at @sbarsh and @dreamit on Twitter or tag us on LinkedIn we'll make sure to like and comment. TIA!

[@vishnuch1476]

@@stevebarsh7727 Absolutely will do! Your content has been extremely helpful and off the media platforms I already have my fellow entrepreneurs watch them. Thanks again for the link.

[@nelsonnigel4775]

good question

[@iloito]

sooooo helpful

[@heyifeoma]

This was very helpful

[@BornAndErrorOccur]

You are such a handsome Dude.. :)