The problem with traction interviews is that they rarely explain what really put them over the top.
i.e. This is how Reddit gained traction:
"Reddit seeded the initial content on Reddit almost exclusively through the efforts of the Reddit team in the early days. For the first few months of Reddit’s life, Reddit co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman scoured the web to find interesting articles to post to Reddit. They were able to create the illusion of more contributors by submitting articles under different user names. As Reddit developed a loyal readership (due to the content hand-selected by the team) other users began to submit links, although the Reddit team was still responsible for 80% of the submitted links for many months. "
So for months, 80% of the content on Reddit came from just two people using several fake accounts. It wasn't SEO, it wasn't design or a specific feature, it was misrepresenting themselves and their product to the public.
Now, clearly that worked and they went on to do some neato stuff. The ends seem to have justified the means in the hearts of Redditors.
But when you read an interview like this with Jimmy Wales where he says he doesn't know how or why his site took off, that's pretty hard to believe. Perhaps he just doesn't want to be forthcoming with some of the things he was doing. Understandable, it just means you won't get much out of the interview.
So if you can get folks to speak about what they REALLY did to gain traction, that'd be great. I read very few interviews that get into the real stuff though.
My main goal is to get to that real stuff in effort to demystify the process of getting traction. It's the only reason I'm doing this interview series.
To that end, I'm constantly asking about analytics, metrics and inflection points. I think you'll find the first four interviews I did fall more into the category you seem to be looking for, i.e. contain explanations of particular tactics used.
However, I take Jimmy at his word that they didn't have analytics up and he doesn't know exactly what happened. I'm learning that there are a class of ideas that just take off. It's rare, but it happens--sort of the right place at the right time matched with execution (read not screwing it up). I put reddit in that category as well. I think Hot or Not is another.
Frankly, I don't know what I'm going to get when I do one of these interviews. I'm going for variety, but it's hard to know what category a particular interview will fall into a prori. Personally, I find this category of just taking off fascinating. I think it shows some ideas are very valuable.
Finally I welcome any interviewing advice. I want to make the series as good as possible.
My point though was that Reddit was NOT just a "good idea that took off." The secret sauce was 2 dudes posting 80% of the stories for several months. Without that, no Reddit.
i.e. This is how Reddit gained traction:
"Reddit seeded the initial content on Reddit almost exclusively through the efforts of the Reddit team in the early days. For the first few months of Reddit’s life, Reddit co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman scoured the web to find interesting articles to post to Reddit. They were able to create the illusion of more contributors by submitting articles under different user names. As Reddit developed a loyal readership (due to the content hand-selected by the team) other users began to submit links, although the Reddit team was still responsible for 80% of the submitted links for many months. "
http://www.startup-review.com/blog/reddit-case-study-how-per...
So for months, 80% of the content on Reddit came from just two people using several fake accounts. It wasn't SEO, it wasn't design or a specific feature, it was misrepresenting themselves and their product to the public.
Now, clearly that worked and they went on to do some neato stuff. The ends seem to have justified the means in the hearts of Redditors.
But when you read an interview like this with Jimmy Wales where he says he doesn't know how or why his site took off, that's pretty hard to believe. Perhaps he just doesn't want to be forthcoming with some of the things he was doing. Understandable, it just means you won't get much out of the interview.
So if you can get folks to speak about what they REALLY did to gain traction, that'd be great. I read very few interviews that get into the real stuff though.