Why you should add friction to your onboarding
Why do I need to connect a datasource to get started with Equals? And I have to put a credit card down too! You're losing everyone with all this friction! You've got to make it easy to get started. We heard it over and over again. Following one of my hard-learned lessons about onboarding (learned while leading growth at Intercom) we required all new Equals users to connect a datasource (like a database or your Stripe account) to our spreadsheet product to get started. But we kept hearing from everyone – investors, team members, customers, prospects – that this friction hurt people's ability to get started. So, we removed the requirement. And then? Retention tanked. The thing people misunderstand about onboarding is the goal is not for people to complete onboarding. Your goal is for people to get their first moments of value from your product, commonly known as “activation”. All the talk about eliminating friction and removing steps is totally detached from this goal. But wait, you can
Explore this link on the map →