The Truth About Traction: Why Fakery Fails Startups

I’ve been tracking early-stage company metrics for a while now, mostly out of professional curiosity, but lately, I’ve noticed a worrying trend bubbling up across pitch decks and early investor updates. It seems some founders are confusing activity with actual forward motion. We all want to see growth, that upward curve on the chart, but when you start probing the underlying mechanics of that growth, sometimes what you find isn't organic movement but carefully constructed artifice. It’s the difference between a well-tuned engine running efficiently and one that’s just spinning its wheels in the mud, generating a lot of noise but zero actual distance covered.

This obsession with looking successful before one is truly ready often backfires spectacularly, not just in the immediate funding round, but years down the line when real scaling demands genuine market validation. Let's pause for a moment and examine what we mean by "traction" because, frankly, the current definition seems dangerously elastic in some circles. Real traction isn't just a number posted on a dashboard; it’s a measurable, repeatable interaction that suggests the market genuinely needs what you are building, and is willing to exchange something of value for it.

When I look closely at these manufactured metrics, I often see vanity data masquerading as substance. Think about the classic example: achieving high user sign-ups but seeing near-zero daily active usage, or worse, seeing users churn almost immediately after that initial registration spike. That initial sign-up might be driven by a one-time, heavily subsidized marketing blast or perhaps even bot activity disguised as early adopters, which gives a fleeting illusion of momentum. I’ve seen teams spend disproportionate amounts of capital acquiring users who fundamentally don't fit the ideal customer profile, simply to inflate the top-line acquisition number for an upcoming meeting. This distorts the unit economics entirely, making future fundraising projections based on those faulty inputs wildly unreliable. Furthermore, chasing these shallow wins often distracts engineering and product teams from the actual work: building features that solve deep user pain points. It becomes a feedback loop where the solution is optimized for the metric, rather than the user, which is a recipe for long-term stagnation.

The true signal of traction, the kind that withstands serious due diligence, resides in retention and willingness to pay, not just raw volume. If customers are sticking around, using the product consistently beyond the novelty phase, and crucially, if they are willing to part with actual currency—not just trial credits—that suggests you’ve hit something real. Retention curves that flatten out quickly, showing a steep drop-off after the first 30 days, scream "feature, not a solution" in my book. Investors aren't fools; they are looking for evidence that the cost to acquire a customer (CAC) will eventually be substantially outweighed by the lifetime value (LTV) they generate, and that equation simply cannot be solved with fake initial volume. I always look for evidence of organic word-of-mouth growth or customers actively seeking out the product without heavy promotional spending, as that is the purest form of market validation. When the product itself becomes the primary driver of new adoption, that’s when the engine is truly engaging the road surface.