What is the explicit traction goal you are working towards?

Alexey Shashkov
9 replies
Hey, makers! I keep reading the «Traction» book by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, and it says we should always have an explicit TRACTION GOAL we’re working toward. This could be 1K paying customers, 100 new daily customers, or 10% of our market. They write this should be a goal where we hit the mark would change things significantly for our project’s outcome. We've hit 100 subscribers on the waiting list a few days ago, and I'm trying to set the next traction goal for Getlanding.io. I think it should be 50 initial users who have tried our product. What do you think about that, and what's your traction goal now? https://storage.googleapis.com/indie-hackers.appspot.com/post-images/829cb2fdf9/0yVv0gGPXZe2Exsi0GSF7ECvqhc2/a940c328-11d9-1d18-3d22-f51672ccb539.png

Replies

Ahmad Faraaz
Try to set traction goals as a % rather than number. Grow 10% WoW rather than 100 new customers this week
Alexey Shashkov
@wittyfarzi Hi Ahmad, I totally agree. Cool. The growth rate from week to week is cooler than just an absolute number.
Luigi Claudio
Hello Alexey, 50 sounds good, any reason why 50? And not 10 or 20. My traction goal at the moment is 1 sign up to my free trial with https://gb.hounderly.com, have been sending cold messages for the last week. Do you have any suggestions?
Alexey Shashkov
@luigiclaudio Best of luck, Luigi!
Alexey Shashkov
@luigiclaudio Hey, Luigi! I thought 50 is a stretch goal but finally, I've set the traction goal in 10% growth rate in new users Week over Week. Thanks for sharing your goal. I think 1 sign-up is better than zero. But you can set the stretch goal in 10 sign-ups to your free trial. I think with 1 sign up you won't feel the traction, but with 10, you'll feel. Traction is a line, not a dot.
Luigi Claudio
@shashcoffe Nice, 10% growth week over week sounds a good approach rather than a hard number. Moved my traction goal to 10, thank you for the suggestion and the wise words
William Nnamani
Explicit traction goal sounds nice and mine is improving daily on my development journey as a software engineer and getting out of my comfort zone to start a startup .
Alexey Shashkov
@techbro William, that's a good goal, but I think the traction goal should be measurable=)
Isaiah Trotter
I'd say 500 signups on https://amihot.site I was actually using offline advertising writing the website name with chalk on a nearby college campus. Only got me a measly 7 signups before it rained though lol. That's a great book btw. Just finished reading it a couple days ago.