About this episode
The episode discusses the Strength of Evidence Matrix and how it evaluates traction through various business scenarios.
Hey friends 👋 Six paying customers. $4,800 MRR. The founder already knows which two to discount. Same evidence. Cameron gives it an 8. JDM gives it a 6. That’s the conversation the Strength of Evidence Matrix is built for. This week, we dig into the Strength of Evidence Matrix — one of the core Traction Lab tools. It evaluates your traction on two axes: how robust is the signal (from interest to intent), and how independent is the source (from affiliated to cold). Most founders count their evidence. This framework grades it — and most of the time, the grade is a lot worse than it looks. From a pet emergency app drowning in warm surveys, to a background check SaaS with real revenue but one cold customer keeping the whole signal honest, to a B2B platform that made it from their rolodex all the way to a cold annual contract — we run three scenarios through the matrix and rate each on the conviction scale. There’s even a JDM-Cameron split on the last one. JDM’s three-year Lord of the Rings marathon is almost over. Cameron just watched the GuLP team take fifth place and $10K in Minneapolis. As always, thanks for listening. —Cameron and JDM Resources: * High Conviction Happy Hour…
People in this episode
Hosts: Cameron, JDM
Topics covered
- traction evaluation
- Strength of Evidence Matrix
- founder insights
- business scenarios
- conviction scale
Keywords
- traction
- evidence matrix
- business evaluation
- founder insights
- conviction scale
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Traction Lab Venture School, GuLP
Books & works: Lord of the Rings
Places: Minneapolis
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- Are you pivoting or just stacking assumptions? · May 18, 2026 · 40 min
- Clean your pipeline: polite nos vs real yeses · May 12, 2026 · 34 min
- Weekly AMA: what investors actually need · April 29, 2026 · 1h 11m
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