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A comment on Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant Traffic Growth.

Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by orangethirty on Monday April 08, 2013 @10:03PM (#5516040)
I don't see how traction relates to traffic. Traction rates to financials. Traffic relates to momentum, which is more of a measure of visitors, and not of growth. Not a bad data set per we, either. I'd love to see this type of approach done with each company's growth, but I am sure most will shy away, including the YC founders.
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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by mrwhy2k on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @01:35AM (#5516616)
Anyone can pop up their alexa ranks in the short term, but long term you still need retention, which equals traction. Typically higher the rank, the better you're doing.
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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by tomasien on Monday April 08, 2013 @10:05PM (#5516052)
Traction relates to financials - citation needed
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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by tomasien on Monday April 08, 2013 @10:33PM (#5516114)
You can argue about which kind of traction is better, revenue or traffic, but there is no doubt the traffic and users == traction.
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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by il on Monday April 08, 2013 @10:13PM (#5516071)
Isn't that just a truism? Revenue growth=traction by definition.
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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by tomasien on Monday April 08, 2013 @10:16PM (#5516079)
No, that is not a truism. It is a falsism if it is any kind of ism.

Instagram has yet to make a single dollar, for an extreme example, and yet nobody would argue it has gained insane amounts of traction since in the mobile photo sharing space since launch. I would use Facebook as an example, but they had small revenue generating efforts early on so it doesn't make as clean of an example.

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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by il on Monday April 08, 2013 @11:50PM (#5516348)
Let me rephrase then: Not all traction is revenue growth, but all revenue growth is traction(again, by definition).
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Re:Traction Tracker: Y Combinator Companies With Significant... by dmor on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @12:16AM (#5516416)
Not necessarily, in fact that was was of the fallacies of the dot com bubble. Revenue is traction if it is gained at a reasonable cost. There are definitely unit economics that look like growth but come at an unsustainable cost.
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