Traction is the key driver for any business valuation, and is needed to attract investors, partners or a public stock offering. Your challenge as an entrepreneur is to generate traction and at the same time choose the right metrics to quantify and sell that traction to your team and to outsiders. Business traction refers to the progress of a start-up company and the momentum it gains as the business grows. There is no one way to measure traction, however, companies usually rely on customer response and revenue as indicators of their success. The reasoning behind developing traction is to grow the business while meeting specific company goals and objectives
For all practical purposes, if you can’t or don’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. Most if not all entrepreneurs are quick to tell friends and potential investors about his or her vision of changing the world, about all the customers who have expressed an interest, and about all the other investors who are lining up to get a piece of the action. What they somehow overlook is that those hoping to invest or buy into that vision, goal, business etc would really prefer to hear is evidence of credible traction today, not how great things could be in the future. As a serious entrepreneur, you have without doubt more invested than any outsider, so you should be looking for the same evidence and not believing your own hype. Yet I hear the same story so often that I wonder if entrepreneurs really understand what they should be celebrating, and how to measure their progress against these expectations
