Traction Lab Podcast
by JDM and Cameron Law
The Traction Lab Podcast is a light-hearted, science-based weekly to help first-time founders go from fuzzy idea to real traction with honest insights, tactical experiments, tons of snark, and zero startup BS. zerototraction.substack.com
Episodes
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Your VC is going to fire you (with Kit Ryan)
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern. Four friends start a company, split the equity 25/25/25/25 because talking about it felt awkward, and skip founder vesting because who brings up a prenup on the first date? Fast forward to the first priced round. Two of them are gone, still holding voting…
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Shmillip joins the shmow (finally)
Hey friends 👋 It’s a story old as time. You walk on stage to pitch your startup, and the speakers start blasting “Loser” by Beck. (Literally.) Then investors tell you your market is too small — for a company whose customer base is, quite literally, everyone. This week we finally brought Phillip...
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Bring on the AI co-founders!
Hey friends 👋 You know the founder who swears he’s going to buy a boring, profitable business instead of building one from scratch? Turns out that’s way harder than the internet makes it sound. Joshua Thacker tried it, walked away from two deals, and ended up building his own AI-powered software...
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Traction Lab Live: Is that traction, or are they just being nice?
Hey friends 👋 You have a handful of paying customers. People keep telling you the idea is great. And somewhere in the back of your head there’s a voice asking whether any of it is real, or whether you’ve just collected a small pile of people who didn’t want to hurt your feelings. That voice...
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#107. Sales playbook, or sales guessbook?
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: sales feels gross, so the second you can afford it, you hire someone who’s “done this before” to build the process and go sell your s**t for you. Except that no playbook exists yet. The founders haven’t found it — and an outside hire never will. This week, Cam...
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Bruh you be tweakin’
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern. Founder gets a no, goes home, and rewrites the business model slide. Tweak the header, reorder some bullets. Progress! Comes back a month later with a shinier deck and the exact same business. We call it tweaking, and this week we’re calling it out directly...
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Traction Lab Live: That feature request is probably a polite no
Hey friends 👋 You’ve heard it before: “We love it, we just need the Salesforce integration first.” Or the dental office manager who “has to check with the doctor.” Founders treat these as real objections — they build the feature, they wait out the delay, they hope it resolves on its own. JDM…
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#105: You can’t win a game you can’t see
Hey friends 👋 You know the pitch deck slide. “Use of funds: 30% marketing.” Cool, cool. Except you can’t describe your customer in one sentence, and you’ve never gotten a stranger to actually pay for anything. That’s an expensive guess wearing a blazer, not a strategy. This week Cameron and I...
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Traction Lab Live: a company, or just a popular repo?
Hey friends 👋 JDM ditched us for Bodega Bay this week (family time, apparently more urgent than your traction problems), so Cameron ran the live AMA solo — and the questions did not go easy on him. One founder’s got six enterprise design partners raving about a 40% drop in alert volume. Zero of...
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#104. Even your mom is lying to you
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: you pitch your idea to somebody who loves you, and they tell you it’s amazing. You pitch it to a stranger who’s polite, and they tell you it’s amazing too. Nobody’s lying to hurt you — they’re just doing what humans do. And that’s exactly the problem. This…
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Traction Lab Live: Beware of founder freeloader fit
Hey friends 👋 We don’t know who needs to hear this, but “it’s nice” is not a business model. This week’s live office hours tackled the question every founder running an unpaid pilot is quietly panicking about: people say it’s good, nobody seems excited, and it’s impossible to tell if that’s a...
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#103. Moving forward, or just on a treadmill?
You know the founder who sends the investor update packed with wins? Pitch competitions won, decks redesigned, partnerships signed, impressions climbing. Tons of activity, real effort, a dashboard full of numbers going up. Yet when you look closely, they’re standing in the exact same spot they…
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Just two dudes and a pipeline
Hey friends 🤘 You know the move: a founder drops a big pipeline number into the deck, sprinkles in some recognizable logos, weights everything at 30%, 40%, 80%, and hopes everyone nods along. Investors… do not nod along. This week, we are talking about pipeline theater: the moment your forecast...
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Lukewarm interest is still a no
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: referrals feel great, early users say nice things, and everyone nods along when you describe the problem. Then you ask for money, and suddenly the room gets vague. This week, we took live founder questions across the B2B SaaS map: agencies trying to move…
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Ep #100: Build it, and they will come
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: founder builds the product, polishes the product, adds “one more” feature, then waits for the market to notice. Step one: build it. Step two: question mark. Step three: profit. For episode 100, we continue the Startup Pseudoscience Series with the myth of “if...
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Do you suffer from low T?
Hey friends 🤘 You know the pattern: founders hear encouraging words, dodge the uncomfortable price conversation, and call it traction because everyone is smiling. Cute. Also dangerous. For episode 99, we put Office Hours on the podcast feed and took four founder questions that all circle the…
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People buy products... right?
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: founder builds the thing, founder lists the features, founder waits for customers to notice how obviously great it is. Very compelling! But only for the founder. This week, Cameron and JDM continue the Startup Pseudoscience Series with one of the sneakiest…
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To get started, you need to raise money!
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: founder has an idea, founder needs a product, product needs money, so the next three months disappear into pitch deck purgatory. Very official. Very polished. Still just unfundable assumptions with pretty slides. This week, Cameron and JDM continue the Startup...
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Cam and JDM's public failure
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: you launch a thing, people say they are interested, and when it is time to show up… no one does. Cool, data, I guess? This week, Cameron and JDM record from Science and Startups Live, which was supposed to be a small in-person podcast event and instead became…
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A great idea is the hardest part
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: founder has a big idea, founder protects the idea, founder keeps polishing the idea until it becomes too precious to test. It feels productive. It also feels safe. Which is exactly the problem. This week, Cameron and JDM kick off the Startup Pseudoscience…
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Building got faster. Validation didn't.
Hey friends 👋 “AI native” is everywhere right now—and almost nobody using the label actually qualifies. This week, Cameron and JDM dig into what it actually means to build with AI at the core of your startup (it’s not about your workflow tools), and why the founders most excited about shipping...
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Have you earned the right to delegate?
Hey friends 👋 There’s a moment every founder hits — you’re maxed out, you hate doing the thing, so you hire someone to take it off your plate. VP of Sales. Head of Product. Done. Problem solved. Except it’s not. Not even close. This week, Cameron and JDM break down the Founder Arc — the path…
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You have to earn scale
Hey friends 👋 Every founder wants the J-curve — up and to the right, forever. But that chart has a boring flat part at the beginning that most founders try to skip. That’s the part where you figure out what actually works, prove it can happen again, and then pour gas on it. Skip it and you’re…
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Don’t avoid your customers.
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern. * January: idea. * February: market research. * March: wireframes, logo, landing page. * April: four customer convos. Two said routing is a pain point. Ouch — that’s just a museum of artifacts nobody bought a ticket to. This week, we break down Time to…
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Are you pivoting or just stacking assumptions?
Hey friends 👋 Here’s what a pivot is not: changing your messaging, tweaking your pricing, or trying a new ad channel. It’s also not torching the company and starting over. A pivot is what happens when data invalidates a core assumption — and there are really only three categories worth changing:...
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Clean your pipeline: polite nos vs real yeses
Hey friends 👋 You’ve got 22 prospects in the pipeline. Eight firms said they’ll start after tax season. Five want a follow-up next quarter. Three need a case study first. And you’re feeling really good about it. You shouldn’t. “Sounds great” isn’t a yes — it’s a soft no with a future date...
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How we evaluate traction
Hey friends 👋 Six paying customers. $4,800 MRR. The founder already knows which two to discount. Same evidence. Cameron gives it an 8. JDM gives it a 6. That’s the conversation the Strength of Evidence Matrix is built for. This week, we dig into the Strength of Evidence Matrix — one of the core...
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Weekly AMA: what investors actually need
Hey friends 👋 You’ve had the good conversations. Coffee chats that ended with “this is really interesting.” Followers who DM you to say they can’t wait. And when you go to investors, they pass. Because interest and evidence are two completely different things. This week, JDM and Cameron are…
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This TAM is just a snort of hopium
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern — founder shows up with a deck, flips to the TAM slide, and there it is: $53 billion… $67 billion… any enormous number with a B at the end. And everyone in the room nods like it means something. It usually doesn’t. This week JDM goes solo (Cameron’s out...
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Do your investor updates secretly suck?
Hey friends 👋 You’ve seen the email before: Subject: “Huge month!!” Body: 10,000 users, engagement through the roof, three new features shipped, featured in a newsletter. No revenue. No retention breakdown. No ask. And somehow, you think that’s an investor update. This week, JDM and Cameron…
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When your best customer is also your biggest threat
Hey friends 👋 You’ve got 43 customers using your product for free, a pilot converting at 4 out of 11, and a franchisor who just announced they’re building your product themselves—for free. This week’s office hours was a live collision of founders at very different stages, all running into the…
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You built it. Now what?
Hey friends 👋 You have the domain expertise. You have the product. You might have even used AI to vibe-code the whole thing in a weekend. But here’s where most technical founders hit a wall — not because the product is wrong, but because getting your first paying customer is a completely…
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Founders hear what they want to hear
Hey friends 👋 You’ve heard the feedback. You nodded along. You maybe even wrote some of it down. But are you actually listening — or are you running it through a filter that was already biased toward your conclusion? This week, we got nerdy about the cognitive machinery that causes smart…
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AMA: When your customers won’t pay, the problem isn’t the price
Hey friends 👋 Welcome to our weekly AMA! Every Friday, we go live on YouTube and LinkedIn to answer real questions from founders at every stage. We’re now adding that to this podcast feed every Wednesday so you can catch it wherever you listen. This week, we dug into four questions that each hit…
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Your MVP isn't testing anything
Hey friends 👋 Minimum Viable Product. Three words every founder knows, and almost nobody uses correctly. The “V” isn’t about whether the product exists—it’s about whether you can capture value back. Whether the market will actually pay. Whether you’re testing the riskiest assumption sitting...
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What investors say vs What they mean
Hey friends 👋 You’ve been there. The pitch goes well, the partner’s engaged, and then she says something like “we’d love to see stronger net retention before moving forward.” So you spend the next two months building a cohort analysis dashboard. You come back. She says something different.…
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Your revenue is real. Your sales motion isn't.
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern: solid revenue, happy customers, no churn. Everything looks like it’s working. So you go to raise money to hire sales reps and scale — and investors pass. They say “we want to see more traction,” and you nod like you understand, then go burn more of your…
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“Nobody’s doing this” is not a competitive advantage
You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it. “Nobody’s doing this.” It feels like confidence. It sounds like vision. To every investor and advisor in the room, it’s a 🚩 so bright it practically glows. This week, JDM and Cameron break down why “we have no competitors” is almost always wrong — and what...
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🎧 When fundraising, is bigger better?
🚨 NEW: Cameron and I are super happy to be launching the Traction Lab Venture School, a new program to help founders of early-stage startups find paying customers. Kicks off March 23rd. Only 20 spots. You in? Hey friends 👋 It’s almost a cliché. Some VC tells you to “go bigger” on your…
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Is it a deal or a death trap?
🚨 NEW: Cameron and I are super happy to be launching the Traction Lab Venture School, a new program to help founders of early-stage startups find paying customers. Our first cohort kicks off on March 23rd, and spots are limited. Learn more → Hey friends 👋 Ever had a big enterprise prospect come...
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Pivot, persevere, or pack it in?
Hey friends 👋 We’re coming up on 75 episodes (yes, we’re calling that a win), and this week we’re tackling the decision every founder faces: should you pivot, persevere, or pack it in? It’s easy to confuse “hasn’t worked yet” with “never going to work.” But the difference between those two…
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Founder mode vs delegation theater
Hey friends 👋 This week we’re tackling one of the hairiest questions in early-stage startups: when do you stop doing everything yourself? JDM’s calling in from 30,000 feet (but not really), and we dove deep into the psychology behind premature delegation. You know the pattern: founder gets…
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Are you building a business, or just buying customers?
Hey friends 👋 This week we’re tackling something we see constantly in pitch decks: impressive growth charts that hide their broken unit economics. We dive into the real math behind customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and payback periods—and why your revenue numbers might be...
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Burn rate, run rate, and founders fails
Hey friends 👋 This week we’re tackling something every founder obsesses over but few actually understand: burn rate and runway. But we’re going way deeper than just how many months you have left. Runway isn’t just a countdown clock. It’s actually about what you’re buying with every dollar you...
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Ahhh! Scope creep!
Hey friends 👋 Ever had a customer ask for a feature and felt that immediate pressure to say yes? This week, we’re tackling something every founder faces: the difference between scope creep disguised as customer validation, and high-conviction feature development. We break down why customer...
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But who signs the check tho?
Hey friends 👋 We’re kicking off 2026 with a reality check that could save you months of wasted effort: getting amazing feedback from users means nothing if they can’t sign the check. In this episode, we dive into the critical difference between users (who love your product) and economic buyers...
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Why most marketplaces die
Hey friends 👋 Can you believe this is our last episode before 2026? (We feel like we’re aging in dog years over here.) Since everyone’s buying gifts on marketplaces right now, we figured—why not talk about the business of marketplaces? Specifically, the #1 killer of early-stage marketplace...
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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...
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From low conviction to high conviction
Hey friends 👋 We’re back from our turkey coma with a high-stakes game that every founder needs to understand: what does high conviction actually look like? In this episode, we break down the framework we use at Traction Lab to separate startups that are actually working from those just spinning...
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Live Q&A at GEW!
Hey friends 👋 This week we’re coming to you live from Global Entrepreneurship Week, and we’ve got some news - we’re officially the Traction Lab Podcast now! After counting eight different brands between us (yeah, we know), we’re consolidating everything under one roof. We dive into the biggest...
About this show
The Traction Lab Podcast is a light-hearted, science-based weekly to help first-time founders go from fuzzy idea to real traction with honest insights, tactical experiments, tons of snark, and zero startup BS.
zerototraction.substack.com
Hosted by
JDM and Cameron Law