Ask HN: My SaaS onboarding is a mess

Ask HN: My SaaS onboarding is a mess – what works?

2 nijfranck 1 6/28/2025, 10:38:38 AM

Hi HN,

My tiny team just pushed an AI-driven sales-outreach product (GoAgentic). To our surprise ~50 paying companies jumped in over 6 weeks, and the onboarding currently is Google Meet video calls + followups video calls to explain confusing parts.

This is clearly not going to scale, I’m looking for tactics to get time-to-first-value under 15 minutes without losing the personal touch that early users loved.

What I'm hoping you can help with:

1. What single feature or moment in your onboarding delivered the biggest “aha” for new users? (for us, it would be submitting 1st campaign but many users keep tweaking without ever sending the campaign)

2. Where do you draw the line between automated tours and hands-on support? (Currently, we are full hands-on support)

3. Favorite instrumentation stack (product analytics + feedback loop) for spotting drop-offs in real time? (We currenly use Posthog but I feel like there might be something better specifically for onboarding)

Our main goal is getting people to send their first email campaign as quickly as possible, since that's when they see the real value.

I'd love to hear your tips, stories about what worked (or didn't work), and any strong opinions you have about this stuff.

Comments (1)

herbst · 6h ago

I personally can't think of a single product I use that needed to be sold to me in such a way. If I can't see the obvious benefit on their homepage I wouldn't sign-up in the first place. But that's me.

I always try to lead users directly into the product itself after signup, mostly as this is the way I prefer it myself.

I can't think of a product that couldn't somehow explain itself on a cute well thought out form.

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Ask HN: My SaaS onboarding is a mess – what works?

Comments (1)