Traction Lab Podcast

Hey friends 👋 This week we’re tackling something we see constantly in pitch decks: impressive growth charts that hide their broken unit economics. We dive into the real math behind customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and payback periods—and why your revenue numbers might be hiding a ticking time bomb. Our core question: If you stopped acquiring customers tomorrow, would your ex...

Hey friends 👋 This week we’re tackling something every founder obsesses over but few actually understand: burn rate and runway. But we’re going way deeper than just how many months you have left. Runway isn’t just a countdown clock. It’s actually about what you’re buying with every dollar you burn. Are you learning? Growing? Building infrastructure that matters? Or just... burning to feel product...

Hey friends 👋 Ever had a customer ask for a feature and felt that immediate pressure to say yes? This week, we’re tackling something every founder faces: the difference between scope creep disguised as customer validation, and high-conviction feature development. We break down why customer requests aren’t always worth building, even when they come from your biggest accounts. The stakes? It’s not...

Hey friends 👋 We’re kicking off 2026 with a reality check that could save you months of wasted effort: getting amazing feedback from users means nothing if they can’t sign the check. In this episode, we dive into the critical difference between users (who love your product) and economic buyers (who actually pay for it). This is where most B2B founders burn precious time—running pilots with enthus...

Hey friends 👋 Can you believe this is our last episode before 2026? (We feel like we’re aging in dog years over here.) Since everyone’s buying gifts on marketplaces right now, we figured—why not talk about the business of marketplaces? Specifically, the #1 killer of early-stage marketplace startups: lack of liquidity . This is what most founders miss: a marketplace only exists to make transaction...

Hey friends 👋 This week we’re diving into the metric that separates high-conviction founders from everyone else: time-to-customer (TTC). Most startups die slow deaths because they’re testing the wrong things at the wrong time. * They spend 12 weeks building a marketplace platform when they could validate demand in 12 days. * They build elaborate paywalls when a simple conversation would tell them...

Hey friends 👋 We’re back from our turkey coma with a high-stakes game that every founder needs to understand: what does high conviction actually look like? In this episode, we break down the framework we use at Traction Lab to separate startups that are actually working from those just spinning their wheels. We’re talking clear economic buyers, urgent problems, evidence over assumptions, and the...

Hey friends 👋 This week we’re coming to you live from Global Entrepreneurship Week, and we’ve got some news - we’re officially the Traction Lab Podcast now! After counting eight different brands between us (yeah, we know), we’re consolidating everything under one roof. We dive into the biggest mistake we see founders make: perfectionism. Honestly… if you’re asking yourself “is this good enough?”...

Hey friends 👋 This week we’re breaking down why the common “you need to be 10x better than the competition” advice is dangerously misleading. Everyone says you need to be 10x better than the competition to overcome switching costs. But they’re missing a key factor: it’s not about being 10x better at something . It’s about the ratio between the value you create and the friction of switching. We di...

Hey friends 👋 We’re going deep on something that’s probably killing your startup right now: untested assumptions. Fresh off workshops with David Bland and our GrowTECH Fest session, we’re breaking down the assumption-to-evidence cycle that separates fundable startups from wishful thinking. Here’s what you need to know: A startup is literally just an organization searching for a business model. An...

Hey friends 👋 We’re diving into one of the most dangerous traps in early-stage startups: the say-do gap. You know the one—where 41 out of 47 customer interviews say they’d “definitely use this,” so you rush off to build... only to find crickets when you launch. This week we break down the Four Asks framework: time, money, effort, and access. These are the commitments that separate real intent fro...

Hey friends 👋 This week we’re tackling something we see constantly: founders confusing motion with traction. You know the pattern—you’re “crazy busy” but somehow not making any real progress. We dive into what JDM calls “procrastivity” (productivity + procrastination), where you’re doing things that feel productive but are actually just clever ways to avoid the scary work that actually matters. T...

Hey friends 👋 We’ve all been there—telling ourselves stories that feel true but are really just comfortable lies keeping us from the hard work of validation. In this episode, Cameron and I tackle 8 of the most common lies founders tell themselves. Things like “our users say they love it, so we’re on the right track” (spoiler: interest ≠ intent) and “we just need a few more features before we can...

Hey friends 👋 Ever see a startup pitch with a “$120 billion TAM” and think... wait, what? This week we’re diving deep into Total Addressable Market calculations and why most founders get them hilariously wrong. We break down the difference between top-down TAMs (”if we just get 1% of this massive market...”) and bottom-up approaches that actually mean something. From college fridge rentals claimi...

Hey friends 👋 Ever catch yourself nodding along to customer interviews where everyone says “yes” to your idea? Yeah, we’ve been there too. This week we’re breaking down the classic founder trap: leading customers to tell you exactly what you want to hear. Coming fresh off our Startup Challenge (and maybe slightly sleep-deprived), we dive into the art of unbiased customer interviews using the Mom...

Hey friends 👋 Ever wondered why investors ghost you after seeing your cap table? This episode might have the answer. We dive into the messy world of founder equity splits and why most of them are recipe for disaster. From the CEO hoarding 60% while the CTO builds everything, to the “fair” 50-50 splits that avoid hard conversations, to advisors walking away with 15% for making a few intros. Key in...

Hey friends 👋 Ever catch yourself making massive moves based on tiny evidence? Yeah, we've all been there. This week we dive into the classic founder trap: escalating way too quickly on way too little evidence, from hiring three engineers because "investors said we need a mobile app" to dropping $25K on PR before you even launch (ouch). We break down why startups can't afford awareness campaigns,...

Hey friends 👋 Your retention problem might not be a retention problem at all. This week, we dig into why founders obsess over keeping users who were never the right fit to begin with. Through three real-world scenarios, we explore how viral TikToks and fluffy pilot programs can mask fundamental acquisition and positioning issues. We dive into the parent app trap, the chamber of commerce pilot pro...

Hey friends 👋 Most founders think landing an LOI or pilot automatically equals traction. Spoiler alert: it usually doesn't. In this episode, we break down the difference between real evidence and validation theater. We dive into what makes an LOI actually worth something (hint: it's not the logo on your slide), why unpaid pilots are often just expensive consulting gigs, and how to front-load your...

Hey friends 👋 Got a viral LinkedIn post? Closed a $60k pilot? Three signed LOIs? Cool story, but that's not product-market fit — that's just one hit And one hit doesn't make you the Beatles. In this episode, we break down the unfortunate truth about mistaking flukes for signals. We dive into why scalability requires repeatability, which requires predictability, and how most "validation" moments a...

Founders love to sweat over pitch decks, but investors don’t fund gradient backgrounds or perfectly kerned fonts—they fund evidence. In this episode, JDM and Cam rip into the startup habit of treating slides like mood boards instead of proof of progress. They introduce the idea of the “validation stack”—replacing pitch deck fluff with experiments, traction, and testable evidence—and play their fav...

Founders love to polish their pitch decks, but sometimes all that shine is just… baffling. In this episode, JDM and Cam dig into the difference between an investment story that gets funded and one that just gets eye-rolls. Your investor narrative isn’t about runway math, vibes, or brand awareness — it’s about evidence, milestones, and a credible path to ROI. To make the point, they play a spicy ro...

It’s our 50th episode — so first, thank you for listening, sharing, and occasionally heckling from the sidelines. To celebrate, we’re tackling one of the most common founder slip-ups: mistaking a shiny pitch deck for a solid business model. Investors rarely pass because of your storytelling — they pass because slide 5 reveals you don’t actually have the goods. In this milestone episode, JDM and Ca...

In this episode, Cam and JDM trade the janitor-closet acoustics for a real-deal recording studio (thanks, Urban Hive !) to talk about one of the most expensive mistakes in startup land: skipping validation and building an entire house of cards on untested assumptions. They dig into how founders unintentionally build traction holes —big craters of activity that look like progress but collapse under...

Some founders raise money. Others raise blood pressure. In this episode, JDM and Cam broadcast from a studio so fancy it practically screams “series B energy” — but don’t let the sound panels fool you. This one’s all about pre-seed mistakes. Specifically, the seductive trap of looking busy instead of learning. Think: new logos, onboarding flows, full-blown rebrands, and Product Hunt launches no on...