Few words touch the very core of the entrepreneurial challenge as much as product market fit and market traction.

They are obviously connected, often used together, yet uniquely different.

Entrepreneurs live for product market fit.

They are in the business of adding something new and special to our world. When it gels, it’s the market’s vote of approval, telling them that hell yes—what you built is real and has a shot at becoming something that can grow and stand the test of time.

As a marketer, I think of product market fit in terms of market push and pull. You have touched a market nerve when the inflection point changes, when you stop pushing out to the market and it starts pulling towards you. When gravity has put your brand in the center of customer focus.

It’s a true startup metric that you can both feel in your gut and provide proof points to support.

Product market fit is a marketing dynamic. We build toward it.

Market traction is invariably a sales metric. It speaks to a business model and market share. It’s about taking what works at the recognition of fit and building an infrastructure to take it wide. It’s the true litmus test of success.

These two ideas work together. One before the other, both at the intersection of what you do and the market’s response.

They bifurcate by how more than what in many ways.

We build products with less to get product fit. Often with a little seed money to prove the idea. Then we raise capital to take it broad. That’s the process.

Early stage entrepreneurs run into a trap between these ideas when fundraising.

They take their vision, their team and their market proof out as their credentials to raise capital to build out a plan to go after market traction.

In that dance between risk and reward, in finding the right capital partner to tackle the true market, invariably you are never quite there. Miles or inches apart doesn’t matter in the end.

You have market fit, you never have enough market traction. You have the seeds of what it takes, investors are looking for a few more steps towards the door to feel more comfortable.

It’s as it should be as everyone needs to feel right about the decision. With you. With the product. With possibilities of the market size.

We’ve all been here. We’ve all been told that we have something special but need more market proof.

It’s important to take this as a no. Straight and simple.

Phrase makers mouth the words that there are no NOs in sales. They are wrong.

Sales is about finding the right customer at the right time for a close. Networking is a process. Sales is about closing.

I know this smacks of semantics but it’s more.

Product market fit and market traction are real ideas. Coherent stepping stones to market penetration and success.

You can build the former on your credit card at times. You will fail at the latter without capital and the right partner.

With some exceptions, traction as a sales metric or even hockey stick engagement metrics in a Fremium model is exactly what we raise funds to go after.

Few things are as important, as frustrating and suck more time that raising capital.  Whether you are funding a food truck or mobile dating app, you will be caught in that nether world between product market fit and raising funds to demonstrate market traction.

My advice to entrepreneurs when they ping me nonplussed on the capital raise trail is to face facts and take it for what it is.

A funder may come back later and invest.  But a no is a not interested now and move on.

Go find someone for whom this is the right opportunity.

Go find someone who grasps that you are at a tipping point and will partner with you to go after the bigger win. The real market traction and proof.

Go find someone who can say yes.

When I was working in Silicon Valley, I went to hear Marc Andreessen speak.

I remember his words some 20 years later, and I paraphrase from memory.

The only things that matter are product market fit and funds in the bank to go after market traction. All the meetings, the term sheets and the pitches are just work, till you turn them into a yes and close the deal.

True words to build companies by.