Traction has become this ubiquitous term that too many VCs use to meekly pass on companies, especially early-stage or pre-seed startups. According to Nick Chirls of Notation Capital, modern day seed funds invest more like Series A/B investors of previous generations. Wonder Ventures likes to be the first institutional capital in, which often means we invest in startups before there’s any meaningful traction. We do this because we think it will provide outsized risk-adjusted returns when compared to many other stages in the market.
So what exactly do we look for when we meet true early-stage founders before they’ve achieved meaningful traction? I look for things that I’ve started categorizing as “Micro-Traction.” There are a ton of resources available for founders looking to raise capital from the traditional seed firms once they have this so-called traction. These are the three key elements of micro-traction that founders can demonstrate to create funding momentum before meaningful revenue or customer growth.
Show Small, but Measurable Trajectory of Growth
I’m guessing you’ve heard this one before. And when you did, you probably thought, “No duh! When I hit $100K MRR lots of people will want to invest.” So how do you show traction to early-stage investors before you hit $100K MRR? Show measurable growth and a positive trajectory in an important business area like revenue. It’s OK if it’s on a small base. For example, as explained in Mark Suster’s seminal post about investors looking to “Invest in Lines, Not Dots”, you could show an early stage investor the following trajectory:
Meeting 1 (Jan 1): Pitch the Idea & Vision for the companyMeeting 2 (Feb 15): Have your first 20 customers paying $50/monthMeeting 3 (March 30): Have 100 customers paying $50/month and show a marketing channel that has led to acquiring half of those customers in the last 2 weeks.
At this point, we’re talking about only $5K MRR, a lot less than $100K, but the trajectory of three months of accelerating growth and execution shows me where your business is going and gets me excited about it. This may not be a big number by traditional “seed” investor-traction standards, but investors love to extrapolate from results. Plus, you’ve just demonstrated your ability to execute across three months of interactions with the investor.
Identify Your First Users/Customer Groups
The thing is, you haven’t even been in business for 12 months. You only launched a beta of your product three months ago, so seed investors are basically saying they won’t even consider your business for investment for another nine months. How do you show where your revenue is coming from and who your customers are without large numbers and months of data? As an early-stage investor, I am less concerned with the scale of these numbers, but rather that you can prove that you’ve identified a prototypical customer and you know where to find more of them. One way for me to understand the organic fit of these customers is to become one myself. In an ideal early-stage scenario, an investor can use your product while getting to know you. If your product is for a specific customer who is not the investor, then push the investor to think of a friend, contact or, even better, a portfolio company that can use the product instead. Either way, be generous in giving free and easy access to your service and showing how valuable it is. And if they’re sharing it with others, this doubles as great business development for your company by getting intros to the investor’s contacts. There’s really no reason to be stingy.
Prove Micro-Customer Acquisition
$100K? You haven’t even raised $100K of funding yet, much less spent $100K in marketing. Many seed or Series A investors will ask to review your marketing spend over a couple of months, looking for statistically significant proof that you’ve already begun spending the money to acquire customers at scale. So, how do you prove your command of customer acquisition to early-stage investors? The key is to prove at least one (ideally two) channels at a small scale. Find ones you can test for a modest amount of money (say $500) to obtain specific metrics on acquisitions costs, conversions, and most importantly, the scalability of the channel. For example, Google Search Ads are often one of the best ways to show micro-customer acquisition, as Google provides you with the tools to spend small dollars, clearly track performance and get a decent feel for the scale of potential leads they can provide. I often hear founders tell me their acquisition strategy will be driven by free channels, such as, BizDev, Partnerships, Advisors, SEO, Content Marketing or PR. Heads up, these are examples of the types of answers that usually don’t stand up to the test. Because they are free, every startup is going after them and you can’t buy scale. If you’re going to mention the above strategies, you would not only have to show me a detailed plan for execution, but also make me believe you have a unique competitive advantage to be able acquire customers via these very unpredictable means.
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