Traction Gap: A new startup-focused framework IP from Wildcat Venture Partners

Wildcat Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, has launched a tool that helps explain why some startups thrive and thus raise more capital, while others die on the vine. Last week, the firm hosted an event, “Traversing the Traction Gap,” where it debuted Traction Gap – a framework that describes progressive stages of startup maturity, not tied to financing rounds, during the critical go-to-market phase of a company. Early-stage startups that fail to deliver efficiently and sway enough traffic often succumb to lower valuations, significant financing risks and sub-optimal outcomes, and potentially even shutdown. Wildcat Venture claims that Traction Gap framework, which is an IP of the firm, can minimize such a misfortune as it can trace a startup’s growth from Initial Product Release (IPR) to Minimum Viable Traction (MVT). Minimum Viable Traction is a point in a company’s maturity, where it has built up some idea of “how” and “why” customers are acquired. This can be measured in terms of a certain level of revenue growth, engagement, downloads, usage or the like – that demonstrates market validation and signals positive growth trajectory. Katherine Barr, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, said:

“My Wildcat partners and I have seen many companies wrestle with the challenges associated with the go-to-market phase of their companies. We developed the Traction Gap framework to provide a pragmatic roadmap for entrepreneurs to follow.”

Wildcat Venture Partners plans to use the Traction Gap framework to best position its portfolio companies for success. For this, the firm believes that companies must develop core competencies in product, revenue, team and systems architectures. Also, the firm plans to conduct Traction Gap workshops and events to help entrepreneurs learn successful strategies and tactics to mitigate risk during the go-to-market phase.