Building Companies from Ideation to Scale with Bruce Cleveland
What separates startups that fizzle from those that thrive?
Join us for an episode of The Bliss Business Podcast featuring Bruce Cleveland—founder & CEO of Traction Gap Partners, bestselling author of Traversing the Traction Gap, and the investor behind billion-dollar outcomes like Marketo, C3 AI., Vlocity, a Salesforce Company, and Doximity.
🎙️ Hosted by Stephen Sakach, Michael Liwski & Tullio Siragusa
In this conversation, we explore:
✅ Why most companies fail in the go-to-market gap—and how to avoid it
✅ How the Traction Gap Framework helps teams go from MVP to Minimum Viable Company
✅ The role of purpose, culture, and emotional intelligence in building scalable, sustainable businesses
✅ How founders can evolve into high-impact leaders who create enduring value
Whether you're a founder, product leader, or investor, this episode offers practical insights on how to engineer momentum—and soul—into your company’s growth story.
What’s the biggest gap you’ve seen in early-stage growth? Drop it in the comments.
Bruce Cleveland
Author | Founder and CEO of Traction Gap Partners
Bruce Cleveland is the founder and CEO of Traction Gap Partners and a former technology operating executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur. He has held senior executive positions at Oracle, Apple, Siebel Systems and C3.ai. He has been a General Partner in two venture capital firms, and he was the founder and CEO of Ziplines Education.
His venture capital successes include companies such as Marketo, C3.ai, Vlocity, and Doximity. Many of his investments were just ideas at the time he invested – no product or revenue- and went on to become $B+ outcomes.
Cleveland is also the author of the bestseller “Traversing the Traction Gap”, a prescriptive guide for startups and product teams in mature companies navigating growth challenges.
Today, Cleveland acts as a board and executive advisor to startups, enterprises, and venture firms using the Traction Gap Framework to generate “market engineering” strategies and market success.