How to Nail the Traction Slide in Your Seed Pitch Deck
As part of our ongoing deep dive into the essential slides of a seed stage pitch deck, today we’re tackling the Traction slide. This is one that most founders include, and yes, even the earliest-stage startups need to show momentum for what they are building. In fact, traction may be your most powerful tool for validating everything else in your pitch, from team capabilities to market opportunity.
Why Traction Matters
Traction is a validator. It validates your team’s ability to execute, confirms market demand, proves product viability, and substantiates your problem statement. You spend the majority of your pitch telling an investor how all the parts of your business are going to work, every other slide we have detailed in this series is based on hypothesis. Traction gives you the opportunity to show, not tell and do it with data!
The No Traction Argument — Team and a Dream
There’s a subtle balance at the earliest stages of a company, that moment in time between “team and a dream” versus having real, hard metrics. Sometimes, having a massive vision, a great founder story, but little to no traction is easier to pitch than being out in the wild with limited progress to show for it. Once you have data, people are going to want to look at it and you have to perform.
The reality is that not every entrepreneur can pull off the team and a dream pitch. It is usually more experienced founders with established funding networks. The majority of startups have to kick and scrape by on small amounts of friends and family investment to get to a point where they have enough validation to convince early stage investors to invest. Keep in mind that in most markets, if you raise prior to having any meaningful metrics you typically sacrifice on valuation. There are trade-offs on every funding decision.
Traction Takes Different Forms
Be great at KPI’s. If you are already setting goals for your startup and then tracking those goals using KPI’s then you’ve already done the hard work. If you are less familiar with KPI’s, get up to speed on them. Your KPI’s are your traction! And fear not! While early-stage companies might not have significant revenue, there are a variety of ways to demonstrate traction for seed investors. While we won’t get through every potential metric in this post (feel free to check out our video’s on KPI’s), here are four ways to demonstrate your progress and validate you are on the right track:
1. Revenue metrics — I know, we just said revenue isn’t the end-all be all and here it is, first on the list. It is always going to be a question you are asked about. If you are generating revenue, use it to help tell your story. Just make sure you categorize and represent it correctly (more on this in common pitfalls).
2. Usage — This is my personal favorite metric for startups (at any stage). Every company has a usage metric they can point to. It is more obvious for some, but it comes down to how often do you expect your customer to use your widget vs how often they actually use it. Usage is a leading indicator for both revenue and or churn. No founder has everything figured out from pricing to product. But if a customer is using your thing all the time, and that usage is improving, you are probably on to something. A cohort analysis is a great way to visualize how your usage is improving over time.
3. Customer discovery insights — Early validation from extensive customer interviews and market research. Be wary of surveys, they usually aren’t worth your time. Going deep with a smaller number of clients is more impactful than broad survey data. This also provides you with potential industry references for an investor who will hopefully help validate your problem statement.
4. Product development milestones — Technical achievements that demonstrate execution capability. How quickly have you worked? Can you iterate? How and why have you chosen your product path.
Remember, even if you’re at the napkin stage, you can show traction through deep domain expertise and customer discovery work. The key is demonstrating why you know your solution needs to exist.
Crafting an Effective Traction Slide
The traction slide isn’t just about a random revenue number you did last month. A moment-in-time metric is worthless as a tool for you and does nothing to demonstrate “traction.” You need to show how your KPI’s have changed over time. How quickly you are moving! Momentum may be the most important word associated with fundraising and if you just give me snapshots in time you can not demonstrate momentum.
Another reminder is that your metrics and traction should align with your business model and industry. For example SaaS companies should focus on ARR/MRR and related metrics while marketplace businesses might emphasize GMV and take rate and deep tech might focus on technical milestones and partnerships.
Here are a few other best practices.
- Show both current traction AND future potential — If you have three clients at $30K MRR today but they have agreements in place or even the potential to expand to $300K MRR, don’t sleep on that!
- Use visuals — Let charts, graphs, and logos help tell your story. It is the best way to quickly demonstrate progress.
- Connect to your broader narrative — Your traction should validate key assumptions from other slides.
- Include near-term pipeline — Share signed but not yet deployed deals, detailed pipeline #’s or expansion potential with existing customers. If you have statistics like Net Revenue Retention or Conversion Rates, you can use these to really make your expansion opportunities or pipeline look significant.
Just to reiterate, a key here is showing that your traction isn’t just a snapshot, but rather a foundation for imminent growth. Be careful though — only include near-term, high-probability events. Speculative pipeline or distant opportunities can hurt more than help. Remember, at the seed stage, investors are looking for evidence that you can execute and signs that you’re onto something big. Your traction slide, when done right, provides both.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
1. Vanity Metrics — Using impressive-sounding numbers that don’t actually matter to your business success. I hate vanity metrics. When founders use them I always feel like they are trying to pull one over on me.
2. Mischaracterized Metrics — Calling something “ARR” when it’s really project revenue, GMV or something else. Similarly, don’t inflate numbers that won’t hold up under due diligence. Own what you have actually done. It is tough to get any type of usage or revenue, be proud of it.
3. Static Numbers — Showing cumulative totals without demonstrating growth rate or trajectory.
4. Overemphasis on LOIs — Letters of Intent are often heavily discounted by investors unless they’re tied to clear deployment timelines. If you are reliant on LOI’s offer to introduce the key stakeholders at those companies to the investors. A great reference with someone in your industry will go further than an LOI.
Final Thoughts
A strong traction slide doesn’t just show what you’ve done — it ties your whole story together. It backs up your team’s ability to execute, validates your market, and signals momentum.
At the seed stage, it’s not about big numbers. It’s about fast progress, real signals, and knowing what to measure. The best founders track metrics that matter to them, not just to investors. That clarity helps you decide whether to double down or pivot — and that’s what keeps your company moving forward.
