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Traction is proof — but it looks different in SaaS, consumer, and deep tech. Learn what signals matter at each stage and how to show credible momentum.
When VCs dig into the customer conversations, the revenue, the engagement — they are looking for verifiable external validation of your underlying hypothesis.
Traction looks very different by stage, market and product category. So let’s unpack three core buckets:
Framing: B2B companies should solve an urgent and important need for a well defined persona. The product needs to deliver on a core promise — delivering transformative value to that user.
B2B SaaS traction to raise each round:
Pre-product 👉 100+ customer conversations
Your user/persona is excited to spend time with you and discuss their problems — signalling an urgent problem to be solved. For Kiwi companies, US cold outbound is the highest value customer discovery.
Pre-seed 👉 3–5 design partners
Can you convince 3–5 representative customers to allocate time and resource in providing feedback and using the product? If you can get them to pay something — that is better.
👀 Waitlist Fugazi: Push hard for customers to pay ASAP. Product feedback in the absence of paying for the product can lead you down the wrong path.
Seed 👉 Power users and first paying customers
Ideally for a seed round the product has a wildly happy early cohort of paying customers. Sales are most likely all founder-led to keep feedback loops tight. Early renewals (>100% NRR), high engagement and low churn are all good signs here. International revenue > local revenue.
Series A 👉 Millions (target US$3M+) in revenue and an early GTM channel ready for scale
To raise a Series A you need strong signals of early product-market fit and an early and repeatable sales motion that enables your company to add resource and scale revenues. The path to Series B is all about maintaining explosive growth rates.
Series B 👉 Tripled revenue and positioned to scale
Every round from here is about maintaining escape velocity and staying on the venture path — is there clear line of sight to $100M+ in revenue? Are you building a GTM engine with channel diversification fit for scale? Are you building an organisation that can source, win and onboard talent rapidly and at scale?
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⚠️ Disclaimer: These markers move with market sentiment and the relative pace of growth in different categories. For many years it was par for the course to stand up a good Series A on the back of US$1M of ARR. Those days are over.
AI-native companies are redefining how quickly B2B companies can grow. $1M → $10M inside 12 months is increasingly common — often powered by either:
If you are not building with an AI tailwind at your back, beware… the traction bar may feel much higher. Both the median and upper quartiles ARR for Series A’s have grown quickly over the last 24 months post-GPT4.
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Resources: First Round — Levels of PMF
In particular I love the 4 P’s framework. Suggesting the four vectors you can pivot around include Persona, Problem, Promise and Product.
Framing: Generational consumer businesses rely on simple, fresh insights, executed seamlessly. If the idea doesn’t work quickly and express an early and insatiable level of customer demand — it is unlikely to with more resources.
Consumer traction to raise each round:
Pre-product 👉 1k+ customer waitlist
Can you demonstrate pent-up demand for your idea? Is there evidence of a clear problem and sharp product insight? This could also be ranking on Product Hunt, an engaged community in Discord/Slack, or a successful Kickstarter campaign.
👀 Disclaimer: For consumer software it is increasingly rare to see pre-product rounds get done. With the cost of building lower than ever — there is seldom an excuse to have no product in the hands of customers.
Pre-seed 👉 100s of raving fans
Can you build and ship a product that has extreme early user love and adoption? Demonstrates real engagement and low enough churn that we can model viral or paid loops. Early distribution insights and evidence that users will power distribution without reliance on purely paid acquisition.
Seed 👉 Scaling users and early revenue mechanics (maybe)
From a small cohort of raving fans to early signals of organic growth — for products with social hooks we would expect to see at least 20% MoM user growth. Day 30 retention should stabilise and a core persona will be honed in on.
Organic user growth and retention > revenue at this stage. Especially if there is a social component with real network effects in place.
Series A 👉 Accelerating revenue and virality
If monetised, target US$3M+ of ARR. If free, tens of thousands of users with improving DAU/WAU (40%+ is strong here). Early user love is now propelling organic growth, and engagement shows a habit is forming around the consumer behaviour.
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🚨 Challenge: Consumer has been a hard place to find venture-scale success over the last decade.
Actionable Insight: Focus organic growth strategies propelled by your users. Unit economics are notoriously tricky in consumer as you are working within much lower bands of willingness to pay.
Resources: Frameworks — Chris Paik
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