Traction can speak volumes

A conversation focused on startup traction with Pittsburgh founders Asha Banks and Rachel Reid.

Asha Banks, founder of CheerNotes, and Rachel Reid, founder of Subtl Beauty.

Everyone talks about how important it is to gain traction in the early stages of a startup, but mentors, experts, and investors often fail to tell you how, let alone agree on what traction even means. Since traction is sometimes treated like a shape-shifting mythical creature, most early-stage entrepreneurs simplify traction’s definition to the amount of revenue a startup has earned. But, that’s not always the case. Even if your business is pre-revenue, you have a lot to be proud of and can speak to other metrics, accomplishments, and partnerships that demonstrate significant traction.

For our first Real Talk of 2022, we invited Asha Banks, founder of CheerNotes, and Rachel Reid, founder of Subtl Beauty — two local entrepreneurs who have quickly gained traction for their startups — to share their perspectives on what can make or break a startup’s trajectory. Our chat covered a ton of ground, including tips on how founders and small business owners can showcase their hard work, wins, and future potential.

Here are some of our favorite quotes from Real Talk:

• “Business traction means to me: Your go-to-market feedback loop.”—Asha
• “Business traction is an indicator of brand awareness and product desirability.”—Rachel
• “Customer discovery never ends. You want to keep having that feedback loop to understand if you’re moving in the right direction.” — Asha
• “I think the startup community places too much emphasis on money raised through VCs [Venture Capital] as a success metric and not enough on revenue and profitability.” — Rachel
• “When growing a business, the most important metric a founder should focus on is whatever demonstrates value proposition-tied growth for your company. So, for CheerNotes it’s cards sold.” — Asha
• “Pre-product you’re really [using traction metrics] to convince yourself that your idea is worth pursuing.” — Rachel
• “Earlier on, there was this push and pull between, ‘Do I use my energy to focus on building this company or do I focus on putting together my pitch and writing my 20th pitch deck and exec. summary.’ But then in order for this part to be successful, you need to be building your business and showing traction. It’s a challenge.” — Rachel
• “The most dangerous metric an early-stage founder can focus on is any vanity metric that isn’t proving your value proposition.” — Asha
• “So much of the startup community places so much emphasis on if you raise VC you are successful, and if you don’t, you’re not. . . Once I started raising venture capital, I realized that it’s all kind of a façade. It’s not necessarily a signal of success. You still have to put in the work. You still have to do all the same things. And, raising VC takes a ton of time and takes you away from building the business.”—Rachel

Watch the full conversation with Asha and Rachel below.

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