This is your opportunity to show your progress and demonstrate any market validation you have achieved. Your goal should be to communicate the growth you’ve already experienced and highlight your potential for future growth.
I like to say “if you can get 1 customer, you can get 10 customers. If you can get 10 customers, you can get 100 customers” etc.. Proving that people are willing to pay for your product or service is a great example of market validation– there are almost certainly more people like them who would be willing to pay for your product.
Traction does not always have to be about money. If your company is pre-revenue, metrics such as survey responses and waiting list signups signal interest. However, you should only choose metrics that are “undeniably important.” For example, an increase in web traffic alone is not undeniably important unless it results in an increase in sales, conversions, etc.
If you’ve landed any high-profile customers or clients, you may want to include their company logos on this slide. Avoid any exaggeration though– a Google employee using your product is not the same as having a partnership with Google!
The top slide comes from Kickfolio’s (who later became app.io) pre-seed deck. This is a good example of traction for a pre-revenue startup (I believe “signups” refers to their free beta testing). Stating that the 2,000+ signups were over a 6-week period is also a useful data point.
The lower image comes from Carta’s $6.8m Series A round of financing. This is a great example of a more mature company’s traction slide: They callout the most important metric, they include a visual representation of several data points, and provide a compelling visual representation of their growth.