Some founders raise money. Others raise blood pressure.
In this episode, JDM and Cam broadcast from a studio so fancy it practically screams “series B energy” — but don’t let the sound panels fool you.
This one’s all about pre-seed mistakes.
Specifically, the seductive trap of looking busy instead of learning. Think: new logos, onboarding flows, full-blown rebrands, and Product Hunt launches no one asked for.
To drive it home, they play a spicy round of Money or Momentum?, analyzing founder updates for real progress vs. very expensive wheel-spinning. If you’ve ever spent three weeks tweaking onboarding emails while your churn rate climbs, this one’s gonna sting (in a good way).
In This Episode
* Why startup activity ≠ startup progress
* How to increase your learning velocity and stop mistaking motion for movement
* What “time to customer” really means—and why founders waste too much of it
* The psychological cost of progressivity (aka productivity theater’s craftier cousin)
* Why feature creep is not validation, and neither is your fourth Product Hunt launch
Frivolous Thoughts
* Zero to Traction was featured as a “hidden gem” in the Entrepreneurship newsletter of podcast.today, and JDM & Cam debate whether it counts as validation — or just vibes.
* Cam rocks a shirt with a blue-footed booby and shares a shockingly relevant fun fact: the emu and kangaroo are on Australia’s crest because neither can walk backward. A metaphor, perhaps?
* JDM revisits Black Sabbath in honor of Ozzy Osbourne’s passing, only to discover that 1970s heavy metal now sounds… quaint.
* Bonus round: The duo dubs themselves the “Ted Lasso and Foul-Mouthed Teddy Bear” of startup strategy.
Sponsor: The Urban Hive
A massive thanks to this episode’s sponsor: The Urban Hive.
Brandon and Molly were kind enough to let us beta test their new studios before they officially launch later this summer,
