Founder Lesson
One of the counterintuitive things about startups that most fascinates me is how long they take to see even the smallest bit of true traction. A while back I wrote my first blog post on this topic and it’s one to the topics that I expect to re-visit a bunch in future blog posts.

I believe that this timeline is so counterintuitive because of the proliferation of big tech journalism. It’s so easy to tell and write about “an overnight success” story. Plus it allows readers to dream that it could be them too. I guess it’s like fad diets for weight loss…”easy” is easier to sell. Unfortunately this does a disservice to the truth path of most founders.

In this podcast, this founder describes how he called hundreds and hundreds of companies to initially sell his product. Even after that it was difficult to even get a few signed-up as customers. His first 4 - 6 months was full-time market validation. This founder didn't get a single bad signal (which is rare) and it took four months just to get the initial customers necessary to start validating his idea.

All of this is why I believe that resiliency is the most important founder trait. The journey to traction will take much longer than you think and will be bumpier than you think.

Get Right to the Lesson
I’d recommend listening to the entire thing, but to get right to the point go to minute 8:27 of this podcast.

Thanks to these folks for helping us all learn faster
Fred Shilmover (@fredshilmover), CEO and Founder of InsightSquared (@insightsquared)
NextView Ventures (@NextViewVC)
Jay Acunzo (@jayacunzo) of NextView Ventures (@NextViewVC)

Please let me and others know what you think about this topic
Email me privately at dave@switchyards.com or let's discuss publicly at @davempayne.