Jess from Founders Edge and Caroline from Rogue Women's Fund reveal what separates real traction from noise: revenue validation, user engagement patterns, and why 100 engaged users beat 1000 inactive ones.
Jess from Founders Edge (exited founder, MBA, CPA, and partner) and Caroline Lewis, Managing Partner at Rogue Women's Fund, cut through the noise to reveal what investors actually consider traction. With over 35 portfolio companies and seven years of investing experience, they share the brutal truth: most founder "traction" updates are just expensive distractions from what really matters.
Follow Jess: LinkedIn | Founders Edge
Follow Caroline: LinkedIn | Rogue Women's Fund
Both investors emphasized that traction fundamentally comes down to validation of your startup's core assumptions. When customers pay you money, it proves your business can sustain itself and deliver real value.
Jess breaks down her traction hierarchy: "Revenue is always number one for me. Then it's leads in terms of the content that I'm generating and different channels to see what that converts to. From the product perspective, it's usage, events, attendance rates, and partnerships and integrations."
The key insight: if someone gives you money, your business assumptions are being validated in the market. Everything else is secondary.
"Traction is just validation your business assumptions are true. A startup is just a set of assumptions that you're trying to prove are true."
Caroline shared a critical insight about why quality trumps quantity in user metrics. When evaluating companies, she'd rather see 100 users engaging three times per week over six months than 1000 users with unclear engagement patterns.
The reason: repeatability and scalability require understanding your ideal customer persona. A thousand different types of users doesn't create a repeatable funnel or go-to-market motion.
"I'm more interested in the thoughtfulness around the hundred than a thousand, like 100% because I want higher quality. I want to make sure that you have an idea of what you think is working and what you think you're going after for expansion."
The Challenge: Founders focus on vanity metrics instead of business validation.
The Solution: Structure your traction story around revenue validation:
How to Apply: Lead every investor update with revenue metrics, then support with leading indicators (leads, usage) that drive that revenue.
The Challenge: Distinguishing between real user engagement and vanity metrics.
The Solution: Define success metrics specific to your product before measuring:
How to Apply: Before reporting engagement metrics, clearly define what "engaged user" means for your specific product and measure against that standard.
The Challenge: Scattered efforts without clear measurement frameworks.
The Solution: Time-box experiments with specific success criteria:
How to Apply: Instead of trying multiple marketing channels simultaneously, give each approach 30 days of focused attention with predetermined success metrics.
Jess and Caroline shared battle-tested frameworks from their combined decades of operating and investing experience. Get immediate access to additional frameworks:
✅ The Bottom-Up Sales Strategy for Enterprise Products
✅ The Partnership Integration Value Measurement System
✅ The Investor-Ready Traction Storytelling Framework
✅ The Customer Persona Validation Playbook
Plus bonus content:
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