
#103. Moving forward, or just on a treadmill?
A format-breaker — no science lecture or scenarios, just JDM and Cam riffing on a half-baked "traction treadmill" metaphor: founders who burn energy on vanity metrics while making no real progress.
The Traction Lab Podcast is a light-hearted, science-based weekly to help first-time founders go from fuzzy idea to real traction with honest insights, tactical experiments, tons of snark, and zero startup BS.
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A format-breaker — no science lecture or scenarios, just JDM and Cam riffing on a half-baked "traction treadmill" metaphor: founders who burn energy on vanity metrics while making no real progress.

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The live event that wasn't: you can get 15 RSVPs and still have one person in the room. This one is about what founders should do when the market says, politely, "nope."

Start Pseudoscience Series #1. Your idea feels safest before customers touch it. The real work is shortening time to customer, falsifying the fantasy, and learning to bounce when reality hits.

AI compressed your build cycle, but not your validation cycle. You can ship in a day, but customers still decide on their own timeline. Here's where "AI native" founders keep getting it wrong.