This document discusses common mistakes founders make when pursuing traction alongside product development, emphasizing the importance of integrating customer development and strategic content marketing. It outlines a systematic approach to traction acquisition, highlighting the need for a clear community funnel and the significance of creating valuable content to build an audience. The content serves as a guide for startups to effectively engage with potential customers and establish their presence in the market.

1. CONTENT
Founder
& GROWTH
rob@foundercentric.com
@robfitz

2. @FOUNDERCENTRIC
WWW.FOUNDERCENTRIC.COM
devin hunt
JORDAN SCHLIPF
salim virani
rob fitzpatrick
PRODUCT & UX
SALES & INVESTMENT
BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN &
MENTORING
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT &
LEAN STARTUP
!
!
!
!

3. Gabe is competing
with Google on
search

6. Are you...
Building an empire,
lighting a power-keg,
or starting a movement?
Gabriel Weinberg

7. Reality check!
Every founder dreams of creating an
empire and prays they’re sitting on a
powder keg.
!
But most of us are actually growing
movements. We gain customers and fans
one step at a time. There’s no magic bullet.

8. Mistake #1
They don’t pursue
traction in parallel with
product development

9. Why is it useful to explore early?
1. Initial customer development
informs your product roadmap

10. Why is it useful to explore early?
1. Initial customer development
informs your product roadmap
2. Launch with a nice base of initial
users

11. Why is it useful to explore early?
1. Initial customer development
informs your product roadmap
2. Launch with a nice base of
initial users
3. Test messaging and
distribution channels

12. Mistake #2
They didn’t spend
enough time
pursuing traction

13. How much time is it really worth?
1. Distribution is equally important
as product

14. How much time is it really worth?
1. Distribution is equally important
as product
2. You should be spending 50% of
your time on it

15. How much time is it really worth?
1. Distribution is equally
important as product
2. You should be spending 50%
of your time on it
3. For tech people, you should
probably bias it to 75%

16. Part I.
Content

17. Beware!
There’s more bad
advice about marketing
than any other part of
starting up

18. “Always be blogging!
Always be tweeting! Be
active on Facebok!”
Etc etc

19. Sanity check
“Do more of
everything”
is not a strategy

20. (it is wild flailing from
well-intentioned folks who
don’t know what you
should actually do)

21. Startups don’t
starve; they
drown.
Shawn Carolan Menlo Ventures

22. What we need
1. Clear goal & targets
!

23. What we need
1. Clear goal & targets
2. Simple daily process

24. What we need
1. Clear goal & targets
2. Simple daily process
3. Measurable results

25. Content marketing is powerful
Two startups with the same product;
one of them used blogging strategically

26. Absolutely true, it’s a completely unfair
advantage, and it’s why so many people
harp on folks to start things like blogs and
mailing lists.
!
When you want to do things like sell a book
or a new startup you have a running start!
Jason Cohen
(on starting another company when
he already has an audience of 50,000)

27. The goal
Develop your
sticky community
funnel

28. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up

29. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up
2. You give away free gift & create value

30. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up
2. You give away free gift & create value
3. Exchange larger gift for permission to
contact

31. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up
2. You give away free gift & create value
3. Exchange larger gift for permission to
contact
4. Stay in touch, over-deliver value

32. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up
2. You give away free gift & create value
3. Exchange larger gift for permission to
contact
4. Stay in touch, over-deliver value
5. Convert subscribers to paid customers of
core product

33. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up
2. You give away free gift & create value
3. Exchange larger gift for permission to
contact
4. Stay in touch, over-deliver value
5. Convert subscribers to paid customers
of core product
6. Retain, up-sell, get referrals

34. The community funnel process
1. Traffic shows up
2. You give away free gift & create value
3.Exchange larger gift for permission
to contact
4.Stay in touch, over-deliver value
5. Convert subscribers to paid customers
of core product
6. Retain, up-sell, get referrals

35. If you only have the core
product and not the full
model, you don’t have enough
flow and are tempted to
incorrectly drop the price
Daniel Priestly

36. We’ll need to design these 5 pieces
1. Free gift
2. Product for prospects
3. Stay-in-touch content
4. Core product (£)
5. Follow-on product (£££)

37. Discussion
What are some gifts that
are cheap for us to give
away, and which create
real value for visitors?

38. Gifts
Educate
Inform
Amuse
Inspire

39. Gifts
Educate
Inform
= Content
Amuse
Inspire

40. Content is the keystone of
inbound marketing. Without
content, there’s no SEO, no
social media, no community, and
no revenue.
Rand Fishkin

41. To create value, the
content needs to be
exceptional
!
(which is different from perfect)

42. Content is great
1. Fast & cheap to produce
2. Free & instant to distribute
3. Measurable
4. Lets you begin building audience
before product is finalized
5. Repeatable

43. Your startup has a mission, right?
Startups are designed
to either create joy
or remove pain

44. Your content has a mission too.
What do they get for their time?
This is all about
helping ____________
learn/be/do __________.

45. Tip
Your content shouldn’t do exactly the
same thing as your product. Rather, it
should be interesting for the sort of person
who might also want your product.
!
For example, if your product is healthy snack
food, your content could be about helping busy
parents create a healthy home and happy kid.

46. 120 seconds. Make as many as you can.
This is all about
helping ____________
learn/be/do __________.

47. That’s the
value proposition
of your gifts
and content marketing

48. Design your funnel products
1. Free gift
2. Product for prospects
3. Stay-in-touch content
4. Core product (£)
5. (optional follow-on products)

49. Part II.
Simple daily
process

50. The process
1. Make things

51. The process
1. Make things
2. Tell people

52. The process
1. Make things
2. Tell people
3. Repeat

53. The content creator’s spiral of death
1. Decide you’ll write every
time you have a “good idea”.
2. Wait months.
3. At last, inspiration has
struck!
4. Treat it like your baby.
Protect & perfect it.
5. Takes time. Finally finish.
6. Traffic doesn’t change
7. Not worth it. Give up.

54. Most common content failure
“What should I
say today?”

55. Marketing is work (not inspiration)
Community growth: 2 years of writing when
inspiration struck vs. 3 months of writing
daily
(from roughly 0 to 250,000 monthly visitors)

56. Best practice
Put your marketing on autopilot by deciding:
!
1. What you’ll create and how often
2. Where you’ll announce it

57. Example: tools for writers
This is all about helping new
authors get their first book
finished
!
!

58. Example: tools for writers
This is all about helping
new authors get their first book
finished
!
1. Daily inspirational mini-posts

59. Example: tools for writers
This is all about helping
new authors get their first book
finished
!
1. Daily inspirational mini-posts
2. Helpful weekly newsletter

60. Example: tools for writers
1. Daily inspirational mini-posts
2. Helpful weekly newsletter

61. Example: tools for writers
1. Daily inspirational mini-posts on
pinterest
2. Helpful weekly newsletter

62. Example: tools for writers
1. Daily inspirational mini-posts
on pinterest
2. Helpful weekly newsletter of
an author interview
talking about writer’s
block

63. Remember
Don’t make a decision every day
if you can just make it once!
!
(but of course, be ready to make a
new decision if this one isn’t working)

64. It’s broader than consumer apps
1. B2E? Build credibility
2. Growing? Find key
hires
3. Other situations?

65. What’s your content cycle?
1. How often?
2. What is it, exactly?
3. Where does it go?

66. Best practice
Reduce the cost by:
!
1. Front-loading the creative burden
2. Removing friction from creation
through batching, outsourcing, and
setting up a content creation flow

67. Example: tools for writers
1. Spend 2 hours today finding several dozen
quotes, then outsource the design and daily
posting to a student

68. Example: tools for writers
1. Spend 2 hours today finding several
dozen quotes, then outsource the
design and daily posting to a student
2. Email all your favorite writers today to
ask for interviews. Record the skype
calls as soon as possible and send the
audio to your student helper for
transcription and editing

69. More examples
•
Twitter important to you? Use bufferapp.com and ifttt.com
to automate

70. More examples
•
•
Twitter important to you? Use bufferapp.com and
ifttt.com to automate
Making lots of video content? Set up a permanent
studio for lighting & recording in your flat

71. More examples
•
•
Twitter important to you? Use bufferapp.com and
ifttt.com to automate
Making lots of video content? Set up a permanent
studio for lighting & recording in your flat
Spending forever perfecting your blog posts? Write
outlines and then pay a grad student £10 to edit
•

72. More examples
•
•
Twitter important to you? Use bufferapp.com and
ifttt.com to automate
Making lots of video content? Set up a permanent
studio for lighting & recording in your flat
Spending forever perfecting your blog posts? Write
outlines and then pay a grad student £10 to edit
Wasting time on fancy graphs? Use tools like
infogr.am to trivialize the process
•
•

73. More examples
•
•
•
•
•
Twitter important to you? Use bufferapp.com and
ifttt.com to automate
Making lots of video content? Set up a permanent
studio for lighting & recording in your flat
Spending forever perfecting your blog posts? Write
outlines and then pay a grad student £10 to edit
Wasting time on fancy graphs? Use tools like
infogr.am to trivialize the process
Video editing taking forever? Adjust your style &
content to work with socialcam.com in one take

74. Mistake #3
They didn’t take
advantage of microopportunities

75. Micro-opportunities
Micro-opportunities are little chances to
grow which appear unexpectedly and
temporarily.
!
E.g. responding to a story in the press or
trying a newly created advertising platform.

76. Each of the letters was a successful
micro-opportunity for growth

78. This week, for example, Instagram is
launching their new ad platform

79. You have to be watching, flexible
and creative.
!
So you need to be spending
enough time on it.
Gabriel Weinberg

80. Mistake #4
They were biased
toward or away from
certain traction verticals

81. Traction comfort zones
Every startup relies on blogging, twitter,
and Adwords. They can’t be the
solution for everyone.
What about billboards? PR? Publicity
stunts? Direct sales? Lead generation?
Snail mail?
Sometimes the weird stuff works.

82. Mistake #5
They didn’t take a
systematic approach
to getting traction

83. The usual approach is to build
the product, then frantically try
to figure out how to promote
things, then haphazardly
attempt the obvious stuff
Gabriel Weinberg

84. Discussion
We know about product MVPs.
!
What would a traction MVP
look like? What are some
examples?

85. The traction process
1. Have an educated guess at a few
traction verticals

86. The traction process
1. Have an educated guess at a few traction
verticals
2. List them all out in order of potential
usefulness

87. The traction process
1. Have an educated guess at a few traction
verticals
2. List them all out in order of potential
usefulness
3. Approach the most promising verticals
(say five) with small but effective tests

88. The traction process
1. Have an educated guess at a few
traction verticals
2. List them all out in order of potential
usefulness
3. Approach the most promising verticals
(say five) with small but effective tests
4.If one or two out of the initial five
seem promising, focus hard on them

89. Build the funnel to “catch” traffic
1. Free gift
2. Product for prospects
3. Stay-in-touch content
4. Core product (£)
5. (Optional follow-on product)

90. Founder
Centric
HERE TO HELP!
rob@foundercentric.com
@robfitz
Learn more! bit.ly/fc-list

91. Workshop!
We’re going to front-load the creative
burden of “what to write” by coming
up with your manifesto
!
1. You’ll soon have a pile of raw ideas
2. Later, turn them into content marketing

92. Rules
90 seconds per trigger question
!
Come up with as many ideas as you can,
one idea per card. Don’t self-censor.
!
Remember who you are trying to help!

93. 90 seconds
“It is absurd that…”
!
What’s wrong with your industry?
With the world? Pick a fight!
You

94. 90 seconds
“Always/never do X”
!
Nothing like a good ultimatum. Take a
stand. What are the non-negotiables?
You

95. 90 seconds
What are the must-read books
and authors for your visitors?
!
Making recommendations for other good content
is easy and valuable. Why do you like these
sources?
You

96. 90 seconds
Mistakes were made!
!
What are the most common blunders people
fall for when trying to accomplish this? Bonus
points if you can share personal failure tales.
You

97. 90 seconds
What’s the most common
bad advice?
!
Who gave that moron a microphone!? What’s the
most popular advice in this area that you totally
disagree with?
You

98. 90 seconds
What are the recent
questions you’ve been asked?
!
Get into the habit of writing down the questions
customers ask you about the industry - every
answer is a bit of content marketing in disguise!
You

99. 3 minutes
Working in pairs, help each other turn
as many ideas as possible into strong
titles that make a bold claim.
!
Once you have the title, creating the
rest of the content is easy.

100. My process
1. Capture loads of ideas
2. Ideas -> Titles -> Drafts ->
Scheduled backlog
3. Don’t obsess; publish 2nd drafts
4. Automate promotion
5. Ignore analytics
6. Write a little every day

101. Founder
Centric
HERE TO HELP!
rob@foundercentric.com
@robfitz
Learn more! bit.ly/fc-list