How do you use feedback and data to prove traction in your pitch?

All of these tips are good in this article. However, the “art” of the challenge is being able to show traction in a way that is understandable and in a way that resonates with your audience.

If you’re an early stage startup, there are two things you should be tracking. Revenue and product market fit. Revenue is simple, how many paying customers do you have and what do they pay you. For product market fit, show usage metrics. Like active users per week/day or time spent on the platform.

Numbers tell the tale, but remember the human stories behind your metrics. Discuss user interviews and testimonials that sparked epiphanies, not just data that proved hypotheses right. Share anecdotes of delighted customers that made late nights optimizing algorithms worth it. Put faces to stats by introducing team members who made growth possible through ingenuity and grit. Demonstrate you truly know your customers and their needs. Proving traction requires data yet impacts hearts. So weave in the human element—it shows you’re not just chasing vanity metrics but are dedicated to customers. The data proves you have traction, but the stories prove you care.

For example, a startup I’m involved with did over 20 customer interviews about their pain points associated with not having our product. We took clips from that video and used it in our pitch deck to show how many people have the problem we solve.

I highly recommend a post-feedback session with your team. If you ask a person for feedback, you may get a bucketful of ideas. Multiply that by all the folks you get input from and it's apparent that you could have a lot of things to improve. As a team, plot feedback into various categories. These could be product improvement, missing data, unclear explanation, and so on. Determine which of these are actionable. If something is not addressable, mark it so. If an input will take eons to execute, mark it so :) Your goal is to mark those areas which can be executed by your team. It's important to consider input from all even if you disagree. In the post feedback session, evaluate it again. Thank all since their input helps you improve!

The most common issue with customer interviews and surveys is how the questions are asked and social pressure that cause bias. Make sure to think through that and take any measures you can to prevent bias in the answers.

As an investor I look for the key milestones not just for this round but also the next round eg seed to pre-series A - will the venture run out of runway before the next key milestone are reached. So articulate how your current traction leads to the next milestone & wherever you can benchmark with other similar ventures who have raised Series A. A lot depends if you’re a more scientific venture eg medtech where regulator pathways, reimbursement and pilots with evidence or a BSB SaaS which is more straightforward MRR growth where metrics are easier to define and benchmark. Keep doing customer discovery and paid pilots along the way.