(2023-06-17) Maurya Don't Create A Product Roadmap, Use A Traction Roadmap Instead

Ash Maurya: Don't Create a Product Roadmap. Use a Traction Roadmap Instead. Entrepreneurs need to be able to simultaneously pitch a big long-term vision while staying grounded in short-term actions to move their vision forward.

Unlike a product roadmap, a traction roadmap isn’t output-oriented but outcome-oriented. As the goal of a startup is building a repeatable and scalable business model, the only measurable outcome that matters is traction.

charts key traction milestones

There are two recipes for creating a traction roadmap

1. 👨‍🍳The Rapid Traction Roadmap

This recipe uses a Fermi Estimation to pick a meaningful Minimum Success Criteria (MSC) goal, which you then convert into a customer throughput (or traction) metric.

I outlined how to do these first two steps in this issue, where I covered the Rapid Viability Test.

I recommend using a 10x/year growth rate in classic Fermi style

2. 👨‍🍳The Customer Factory Traction Roadmap

While Fermi Estimation is highly effective for quick ballparking, if your model survives the Rapid Viability Test, I recommend creating a more accurate roadmap next using the 👨‍🍳The Customer Factory Traction Roadmap recipe.

this model uses three additional metrics: customer acquisition, churn, and referral rate assumptions to chart your Traction Roadmap.

Janna Bastow's Now-Next-Later product roadmap inspired the Now-Next-Later Rollout Plan. The basic idea is viewing your traction roadmap using three-time horizons and formulating a go-to-market (GTM) plan for each time horizon.

For products at the ideation stage:

For products with some traction already:

Case Study: The Secret Tesla Master Plan

NOW Story (Most Concrete)

NEXT Story (Fuzzy)

LATER Story (Most fuzzy)