This article is part of the Startup Coach series, by Early Game Ventures, dedicated entirely to the pitch deck — the most important document you will write as a founder looking to raise VC funding. The series walks through, step by step, the structure of a compelling deck: from how you shape the story to what each individual slide should contain.

There is a frustrating paradox for most of the startup founders looking for funding: an investor wants to see traction before investing, but without investment it is difficult to build traction. How do you get out of this vicious circle?

The reality is that investors’ expectations for traction can vary greatly depending on the company’s stage, and one of the first things you need to understand as a founder is that not all investors are appropriate for your stage.

If an investor for Series B asks for traction from a pre-seed startup, the problem is with them

There are investors who, regardless of the declared stage of their fund, want to see consistent MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), tens or hundreds of paying customers, and monthly growth even before they write the first cheque. These are not pre-seed investors – they are growth investors that lowered their bar at an earlier stage without adjusting the criteria. These are traction capital investors, not venture capital investors.

If you meet with such investors, it's not a sign that your startup is weak. It's a sign that you've knocked on the wrong door. The best thing you can do is refine your list of investors and focus on specialized early-stage funds, investors who have the experience and are willing to bet on potential, not exhaustive evidence of a mature business.

What traction really means

The most common mistake on this slide is to reduce traction to financial metrics. In the early stages, traction means demonstrable progress in any relevant dimension of the startup.

Product Traction. Did you go from idea to working prototype? Did you launch a beta? Did you iterate on the product based on real user feedback? These are concrete forms of progress that demonstrate that the team is executing, not just planning.

Technology Traction. If you're building something deep tech — an AI model, a hardware solution, a proprietary technology — technical progress is traction. A filed patent, a functional technical demonstration, an experiment that validates that your approach works physically or mathematically, all these matter.

Team Traction. Have you managed to attract co-founders or key employees who quit high-paying jobs to join the project full-time? That says something. Quality people don't jump into startups without a chance; they assess a company's real potential better than many investors.

Market Traction. Have you talked to 50 potential customers and validated that the problem you're solving is real and that people would pay for the solution? Have you got letters of intent, pilots, pre-orders? Even without revenue, proof that the market wants what you're building is traction.

Financial Traction. Yes, this one matters, too — but it’s one form, not the only one. First paying customers, first signed contract, first MRR — all are strong signals, especially at pre-seed.

The bottom line: No one invests in just an idea. But good investors know that early-stage traction comes in many forms. Your job is to show that you’ve made real progress, no matter how big.

As you grow, the metrics become stricter

Once a startup moves beyond pre-seed and into seed and Series A, expectations change. Anecdotal traction and early validation signals are no longer enough. Now it’s the numbers that matter.

And not just any numbers but the right numbers, reported correctly.

Usage metrics – MAU (monthly active users), WAU (weekly active users), time spent on platform, bounce rate — show whether your product creates real value for users or whether they install it and forget about it. A product with 10,000 created accounts and 500 monthly active users has a serious engagement problem, no matter how impressive the total number sounds.

Financial metrics—MRR (monthly recurring revenue), ARR (annual recurring revenue), CAC (cost of customer acquisition), LTV (lifetime value), and churn —are the language growth investors use to evaluate the health of a business. You need to master them thoroughly, not just roughly. 

Reporting Mistakes That Destroy Credibility Instantly

There are some common confusions that, when they arise in a conversation with an investor, signal that the founder does not understand their own business well enough.

Turnover and revenue. In many contexts, especially in those involving startups with a marketplace or brokerage model, gross merchandise value (GMV) is radically different from the company’s actual revenue. If you’re a marketplace that processes €1 million in transactions and takes a 10% commission, your revenue is €100,000, not €1 million. A founder who reports GMV as revenue either doesn’t understand the business model or is trying to impress with big numbers. Both are problematic.

Revenue and profit. Worse than the previous one. Revenue is the total amount that customers pay the company for its products or services. Profit is what remains after all costs are deducted. In the early stages, almost no startup is profitable — and that's completely acceptable. What's not acceptable is not knowing the difference or using them interchangeably in conversations with investors.

Growth without context. "We grew 50% last month" sounds good. "We grew from 2 to 3 customers" sounds different. Growth metrics only make sense with the context stated alongside them. 

How do you present traction when it's low?

In a pre-seed startup, the traction slide will inevitably be short. That’s not a problem if what’s there is real and well-presented.

Showcase what you have: first users, first customer conversations, technical progress, team in place. Be honest about the stage. Don’t artificially inflate metrics or invent urgency where there isn’t one; experienced investors will check them out.

Most importantly: contextualize. Show the trajectory, not just the current moment. A graph that starts from scratch and shows a clear upward trend is more convincing than a big absolute number with no visible dynamics. The pre-seed investor doesn’t invest in what you have today — they invest in what you’ll build with their capital.

If you want to learn what a pitch deck should look like overall, read the article here. And if you want to understand how important the cover slide is, you can find more information here.

Deepen your knowledge by following the episodes about the Problem, Solution, Competition, Business Model & Team slides. (insert links)

Are you building something ambitious and ready to raise a round? Early Game Ventures is a venture capital fund in the top 10% of European funds, investing between €500K and €2M as a first ticket in European startups — often from the idea stage, before things are “obvious.” We invest in tech companies at the Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A stages, with a focus on CEE and Europe, as lead investor. If you have a bold thesis and a pitch with substance, write to us at office@earlygame.vc or send us your deck directly at earlygame.vc.