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But while the lean startup methodology has become practically a gospel in the startup community, it is more honored in breach than in practice. 2) Practice lean startup methodology where you have control. 3) Promote lean startup methodology outside your areas of control. Join us to explore the practice of lean startup methodology.

In 1991, Geoffrey Moore published the book, Crossing the Chasm which shed a bright light on how technology companies should think about markets. Since then, more than 2M copies of Geoff’s book have been purchased and read, and it continues to be a staple on the reading list of all entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial programs at top universities. Now, a new book has come along titled, Traversing the Traction Gap, written by Bruce Cleveland, a general partner at Wildcat Venture Partners and colleague of Geoffrey Moore. Cleveland’s book complements the Chasm by focusing on the internal dynamics that startup teams face when they must first take their products to market.

Bruce Cleveland, founding partner of Wildcat Venture Partners, discusses the Traction Gap Framework and why he wrote the best selling book, Traversing the Traction Gap. Traversing the Traction Gap exposes the reasons behind the staggering startup failure rate and provides a prescriptive how-to guide to help startups to succeed. Bruce draws on real-life examples from his early days at then “startups” Oracle, Siebel Systems and others, as well as his experiences leading investments in startups such as Marketo through the crucial period of building a company and seizing a market. These empirical lessons provide a roadmap, signposts and metrics for succeeding where others have failed.

David and his organization built all of Siebel’s horizontal and vertical CRM product offerings, thereby enabling Siebel to become the fastest growing company in US history at the time – $0 to $2 Billion annual revenue in 5 years (more than 750,000% CAGR) and a market cap of $29 Billion before its acquisition by Oracle in 2006. Not long ago, David was looking to get back into the startup game, so he attended Salesforce’s “Dreamforce” conference and discovered Veeva – a company that delivers industry cloud solutions that provide data, software, services and an ecosystem of partners to support pharmaceutical and healthcare business functions. With its industry-specific cloud and mobile software, Vlocity helps drive digital transformation for the world’s largest companies and government entities including notable companies such as: New York Life, Cigna, Liberty Mutual, Colorado Department of Health Care, Delta Dental, and T-Mobile. Too often, we’ve seen companies’ trip at each value inflection point along the Traction Gap Framework – Minimum Viable Category (MVC), Initial Product Release (IPR), Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Minimum Viable Repeatability (MVR), and Minimum Viable Traction (MVT).