Traction Lab Podcast

JDM and Cameron Law
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Business
  • Updated Biweekly

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

  1. 1d ago

    Traction Lab Live: That feature request is probably a polite no

    Hey friends 👋 You’ve heard it before: “We love it, we just need the Salesforce integration first.” Or the dental office manager who “has to check with the doctor.” Founders treat these as real objections — they build the feature, they wait out the delay, they hope it resolves on its own. JDM (solo this week, Cameron’s in Maui) says that’s backwards. Most of these aren’t objections at all — they’re polite nos, or worse, aspirational yeses that nobody’s actually going to act on. This week’s AMA covers a lot of ground: a $200/month dental SaaS stuck in a three-to-four-month sales cycle nobody’s actually verified; a pre-revenue gaming app blaming retention for a problem it doesn’t have yet; and a founder chasing enterprise logos without one to show for it. Same thread runs through all of it — stop reading intentions and start asking for something concrete: time, effort, access, or money. Also: Josh recaps emceeing Pitch Elk Grove the night before (congrats to Krokos Bio), admits he’s out of coffee, and vamps solo through the intro without Cameron there to tell him to wrap it the F up. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps * 00:00 - Introduction * 02:00 - Is it really a sales cycle problem, or a sales problem? (dental SaaS) * 12:00 - Why “bad retention” isn’t your actual issue pre-revenue * 20:00 - Landing enterprise clients without a Fortune 500 logo * 40:00 - The say/do gap: turning “yes, but” into a real commitment * 49:00 - Virality, leagues, and order of operations (Tiny Golf) * 1:05:00 - Wrap-up and how to submit your own question 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

    Traction Lab Live: That feature request is probably a polite no

  2. 5d ago

    #105: You can’t win a game you can’t see

    Hey friends 👋 You know the pitch deck slide. “Use of funds: 30% marketing.” Cool, cool. Except you can’t describe your customer in one sentence, and you’ve never gotten a stranger to actually pay for anything. That’s an expensive guess wearing a blazer, not a strategy. This week Cameron and I finally deliver on the battleship metaphor we’ve been promising for months — the one we actually teach inside the Traction Lab Venture School. Go-to-market is Battleship: hidden board, no data, every experiment either a hit or a miss you’re supposed to be tracking. Marketing is Risk: full visibility, known customers, known channels, bigger bets you’ve earned the right to make. Most founders skip straight to Risk-level spending while they’re still playing Battleship blind. We walk through the startup core, the riskiest-assumption framework (hello, desirability/viability/feasibility), and the four questions that tell you which game you’re actually in. Also: we recap our latest High Conviction Happy Hour, and Cameron has a new fidget timer that may or may not have a functioning keyboard. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps * 00:00 - Introduction * 02:15 - Why the battleship metaphor * 05:30 - Defining negative space through hits and misses * 12:45 - The startup core and the riskiest assumption * 25:00 - Go-to-market vs. marketing (and why agencies make us cringe) * 40:00 - 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

    #105: You can’t win a game you can’t see

  3. Aug 31

    Traction Lab Live: a company, or just a popular repo?

    Hey friends 👋 JDM ditched us for Bodega Bay this week (family time, apparently more urgent than your traction problems), so Cameron ran the live AMA solo — and the questions did not go easy on him. One founder’s got six enterprise design partners raving about a 40% drop in alert volume. Zero of them have signed anything. Another’s watching champions cheerlead internally, then go quiet the second procurement gets involved. A third has 6,000 GitHub stars, 60 weekly actives, and exactly zero paying customers. Cool numbers, empty bank account. Cameron works through the gap between interest and intent, why your biggest fan usually isn’t your economic buyer, and the cheapest test you can run this month before building one more enterprise feature nobody’s actually offered to pay for. There’s also a scheduling SaaS founder trying to figure out if 11 closed deals are a channel or just 11 coincidences, before he burns $400K finding out the hard way. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM 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

    Traction Lab Live: a company, or just a popular repo?

  4. Aug 26

    #104. Even your mom is lying to you

    Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: you pitch your idea to somebody who loves you, and they tell you it’s amazing. You pitch it to a stranger who’s polite, and they tell you it’s amazing too. Nobody’s lying to hurt you — they’re just doing what humans do. And that’s exactly the problem. This week we’re airing something a little different: a replay of a talk we gave live for StartupSac and Clean Start’s Power Series, all about customer discovery and validation. It’s us, but it’s also a room full of founders firing off real questions, and a moderator lobbing curveballs at us the whole way through. We get into the mom test (why even your own mother can’t be trusted for honest feedback), the difference between interest and intent, and the TEAM framework we use to force a real answer out of a maybe. Cameron breaks down the economic buyer problem — the person who loves your product isn’t always the person who signs the check. And we go after the current temptation to just ask ChatGPT if your idea is good, or vibe-code a weekend MVP instead of talking to a human. Neither one saves you from doing the work. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps * 00:00 - Introduction * 03:00 - Problem vs. solution (and the Henry Ford quote everyone gets wrong) * 09:45 - The mom test * 33:45 - Qualitative vs. quantitative evidence * 41:00 - The ladder of evidence and the TEAM framework * 53:45 - Economic buyers, gatekeepers, and saboteurs * 1:04:00 - Startup theater, procrastivity, and leading indicators * 1:12:15 - Why AI can’t do your customer discovery for you * 1:19:45 - Wrap-up 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

    #104. Even your mom is lying to you

  5. Aug 23 ·  Bonus

    Traction Lab Live: Beware of founder freeloader fit

    Hey friends 👋 We don’t know who needs to hear this, but “it’s nice” is not a business model. This week’s live office hours tackled the question every founder running an unpaid pilot is quietly panicking about: people say it’s good, nobody seems excited, and it’s impossible to tell if that’s a green light or a warning sign. Cameron and JDM’s answer has a name: founder freeloader fit… and it’s not the fit you want. From there, the Greek chorus kept the questions coming: when to hire your first salesperson (probably not yet), the difference between go-to-market and marketing, which side of a marketplace to seed first, how to pick between three startup ideas without wasting a year on the wrong one, and yes, how to actually incorporate the thing. Bonus points if you catch the Justified tangent and the recap of Sacramento’s startup scene before the questions even start. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps * 00:00 - Introduction * 08:15 - When to hire your first salesperson * 13:15 - Go-to-market vs. marketing (and when a consultancy actually helps) * 18:15 - Unpaid pilots and founder freeloader fit * 22:30 - Common sales pitch and positioning mistakes * 30:00 - Marketplace liquidity: which side do you seed first? * 39:15 - Invoice financing and factoring for startups * 41:00 - Picking between multiple startup ideas * 48:15 - How to actually incorporate your startup 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

    Traction Lab Live: Beware of founder freeloader fit

  6. Aug 17

    #103. Moving forward, or just on a treadmill?

    You know the founder who sends the investor update packed with wins? Pitch competitions won, decks redesigned, partnerships signed, impressions climbing. Tons of activity, real effort, a dashboard full of numbers going up. Yet when you look closely, they’re standing in the exact same spot they were three months ago. That’s the treadmill. This week we grabbed our drinks, gave a belated toast to 100 episodes, and ran with a half-baked metaphor brought to us by JDM’s new office treadmill: you can burn all the calories you want and never move an inch relative to the world around you. Startups do this constantly—expending finite time and energy on the facade of progress instead of the one thing that counts, evidence from the market. We get into why vanity metrics feel like a marathon, why “18 months of runway” is meaningless without a milestone, and the one question that tells you you’re actually moving: are you learning things that change your behavior? Plus a detour into cartography, The Hobbit, and why ADHD founders buy all the kit but never do the thing. This one’s rough around the edges on purpose—we want to know if the metaphor lands. Come crap on it. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction 02:15 - Why we’re doing this one differently 05:30 - The traction treadmill, explained 12:45 - Vanity metrics vs. real-world progress 25:00 - Drawing the map: how you know you’re moving 42:00 - The ADHD kit trap: being the thing vs. doing the thing 50:00 - Frivolous Thoughts: The Expanse & Ted Lasso 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

    #103. Moving forward, or just on a treadmill?

  7. Aug 9

    Just two dudes and a pipeline

    Hey friends 🤘 You know the move: a founder drops a big pipeline number into the deck, sprinkles in some recognizable logos, weights everything at 30%, 40%, 80%, and hopes everyone nods along. Investors… do not nod along. This week, we are talking about pipeline theater: the moment your forecast stops being useful intelligence and starts becoming performance art. If your weighted pipeline is built on LOIs, friendly intros, founder discounts, or logos that have never returned an email, you do not have a forecast. You have vibes. So we walk through the POST framework: paid, outside, same, and time: * Has anyone paid under repeatable conditions? * Has anyone outside your network paid? * Do those customers actually look the same? * And do opportunities leave the pipeline in a predictable way, whether they close won or close lost? This one is a little different: no scenarios, no live questions, just two humans in Traction Lab HQ-ish territory talking through the framework, the investor lens, the founder arc, and why pretending Apple is in your pipeline is not a strategy. Frivolous Thoughts includes Cameron rewatching Silicon Valley through a Traction Lab lens and JDM fighting the good fight against office/studio logistics. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction 02:15 - Pipeline theater 05:30 - What pipeline is supposed to prove 12:45 - The POST framework 25:00 - Sameness, timing, and disqualification 40:00 - 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

    Just two dudes and a pipeline

  8. Aug 4

    Lukewarm interest is still a no

    Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: referrals feel great, early users say nice things, and everyone nods along when you describe the problem. Then you ask for money, and suddenly the room gets vague. This week, we took live founder questions across the B2B SaaS map: agencies trying to move beyond word of mouth, technical founders looking for business co-founders, freelancers signing up once and disappearing, and manufacturers who “have the problem” but won’t commit to paying for a solution. The principle running underneath all of it: not all evidence is created equal. A referral customer is useful, but a cold customer is stronger. A free user is noisy, but a paying customer tells you something real. A potential co-founder can help, but building your own learning engine beats panic-hiring someone to save you. From paid ads that don’t pencil out to products that feel useful but don’t pull people back, we break down how to separate weak signals from actual traction and rate each move with the usual conviction lens. Plus, frivolous thoughts cover Napa wine nerdery, Sacramento’s underrated proximity advantage, and Cameron’s San Francisco Marathon. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction 02:15 - Live founder questions 05:30 - Referrals, paid ads, and cold evidence 12:45 - Finding a co-founder without panic 25:00 - Free users, retention, and willingness to pay 40:00 - 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

    Lukewarm interest is still a no
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About

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

Information

  • Creator
    JDM and Cameron Law
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    107
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © JDM & Cameron Law
  • Show Website
    Traction Lab Podcast