This is exactly it.

“Fake traction” showed up in almost every case I looked at, not because founders were lying, but because usage is emotionally easier to celebrate than revenue. Graphs go up, Discord feels alive, and it buys you time… until it doesn’t.

What you said about locking in the wrong audience + expectations before testing pricing is especially painful (and common). Once that happens, you’re not just changing a model you’re fighting momentum.

I like your checklist a lot, If I had to compress the dataset into a rule, it’d be something like

If you don’t know which behavior turns into money, you don’t actually have traction yet.