The payment path works — activation doesn't. Redesigning our onboarding around one event.

I like the single-event focus here.

The tricky part is that payment proves intent, but activation proves the workflow worked.

A user can pay, finish onboarding, and still never reach the first useful outcome. So measuring “saved to Board” instead of “completed onboarding” feels like the right move.

Curious whether you’ll track just first save, or something like first useful board with 3 saved references?

The ‘run the first search for them’ move is underrated. Most onboarding assumes users know what to do next removing that first decision completely changes activation rates. Curious how you’re handling the drop-off between saving and actually sharing?

The single-event focus is the right instinct. The thing I'd watch is that the drop usually happens one step before the event you're optimizing, not at the save itself. If you auto-run that first search and the results come back mediocre, people judge the whole tool on that one result set and leave before they save anything, so the quality of that seeded first search probably matters more than the save UI you're building around it.

The other thing is that one save is a solo action but the value you described is collaborative. I'd check whether the cohort that saves three-plus references in their first session retains better than the one-save cohort, because if it does, your real activation target might be the third save rather than the first. That makes onboarding about keeping them going after the first save, which is a different design problem than just landing it.

Either way I'd instrument time-to-first-save and the search-to-save drop separately, so you can see which half is leaking.

Running the first search for the user is a smart move since the empty state is where most people bail. I had the same thing with a niche tool where nobody got the value until they saw one real result, so I started doing the first action for them. How are you measuring whether someone actually hit the activation moment versus just clicking through the flow?

Picking ONE activation event is the right call. Most founders try to design an onboarding that covers everything and end up covering nothing.

One question: how did you identify that 'finding a useful reference and saving it to a Board' is THE event? Did support tickets tell you, or data?

Just curious what signal made it click.

Focusing on that single activation event is such a smart move, Alexander. If users don't hit that core value or 'Aha! moment' quickly, they just bounce.
Running the first search automatically to guide them towards saving/sharing sounds like a solid way to reduce friction. Love this approach, good luck with the redesign.

I like that you're optimizing around one activation event instead of trying to improve the whole onboarding at once.

It also changes the success metric. The goal isn't "finish onboarding"—it's reaching the first moment where the product starts feeling useful.

I'd be interested to see how much that shifts retention.