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 Customer: the single most important velocity metric for early-stage founders, and the one most likely to make you squirm.It’s a simple measurement — how long from “I have an idea” to “I tested it with a real customer”? Turns out, that gap is where most founders hide. Cameron and JDM dig into why we delay, what “progressivity” looks like in the wild, and what it actually means to have a bias toward getting in front of customers.We run three scenarios through the TTC lens — from a dog grooming app that spent three months in pre-production before a single customer call, to a churn prediction startup that got a prospect to ask “what would it cost to get this every month?”, to a compliance platform that built an entire outbound playbook before sending their first cold email.tbh… conviction scores were grim, but we left every founder with a clear path forward. We hope.And in frivolous Thoughts:* Cameron caught the Buffalo Traffic Jam live at a 200-person DC venue (Bands in Town is the app you didn’t know you needed), and* JDM makes a strong case for Sofia Isella as the reigning queen of dark pop.As always, thanks for listening.—Cameron and JDMTimestamps00:00 Introduction02:15 Time to Customer05:30 Scenario 1: Mobile dog groomer routing app12:45 Scenario 2: SaaS churn prediction platform25:00 Scenario 3: Home healthcare compliance training40:00 Frivolous Thoughts 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