Hacker News Reader

Comment by orangethirty | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Traction relates to financials - citation needed

Isn't that just a truism? Revenue growth=traction by definition.

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.

Let me rephrase then: Not all traction is revenue growth, but all revenue growth is traction(again, by definition).

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.

You can argue about which kind of traction is better, revenue or traffic, but there is no doubt the traffic and users == traction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com