What’s your time to customer?

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 if anyone will pay.We break down why TTC is really about the pace of learning: the faster you get validated data back from actual humans willing to part with actual money, the faster you de-risk your startup.It’s not about building faster—it’s about testing smarter.This week, JDM and Cameron walk through three contrived (but painfully realistic) scenarios: a B2B SaaS company planning an 8-week feature build before talking to customers, a marketplace building for 12 weeks before getting both sides on board, and a freemium app that waited way too long to test pricing.The pattern? Founders who front-load feasibility (”can we build it?”) instead of desirability (”will anyone actually pay for it?”).And, yeah… the order matters.We also get into the weeds on rapid prototyping, fake door tests, concierge MVPs, and why you should almost never spend months building something before getting it in front of customers.Plus, why 200 free users might actually be worse than zero users.And in Frivolous Thoughts—JDM nerds out over a slow-burn Scottish cop show while Cameron drops a bomb about how the University of Utah just turned college sports into a $500M private equity play.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDM This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit zerototraction.substack.com