Traversing the Traction Gap

Vision, groundbreaking ideas, total commitment, and boundless enthusiasm characterize most startups, but they require capital to go from promising product in a potential blockbuster category to scalable business. However scrappy they are, industry statistics show that more than 80 percent of all early-stage startups fail. Most can build a product, but the vast majority stumble when it comes time to take those products to market due to poor or non-existent "market engineering" skills. Traversing the Traction Gap exposes the reasons behind that scary failure rate and provides a prescriptive how-to guide, focused specifically on market engineering techniques, so startups can succeed. Getting over the go-to-market hurdle stymies startups again and again. Just when they need to develop and define a category and create sophisticated positioning, demand-generation and revenue-conversion programs--when they must establish a foothold in the market--they run short on time and money. This is the Traction Gap, that period of time between introducing a new product into the market and being able to scale it during a rapidly closing window of opportunity. Traversing the Traction Gap is a practical guidebook for navigating this fraught period in the tumultuous early life of a startup. Based on real-life examples from the startup world, Cleveland's advice provides a roadmap, signposts, and metrics for succeeding where others have failed.