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Three people signed up for my SaaS... and none uploaded a document.

Over the last few weeks, I noticed an interesting pattern while building DocMetrics.

Three different people signed up. Two were from the same company. None uploaded a document.

It's tempting to conclude my onboarding is broken, but I realized I don't actually know why they stopped.

They may have been evaluating the product, got distracted, didn't have a document ready, or hit onboarding friction.

Instead of guessing, I'm treating this as a hypothesis and planning to talk to more users before changing the product.

For those of you building B2B SaaS:

Have you seen users sign up but never complete the first meaningful action?

What turned out to be the real reason?

on July 24, 2026
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    I like that you're resisting the urge to optimize around a conclusion you haven't earned yet.

    What kind of evidence would actually convince you the problem is onboarding rather than something earlier in the decision to sign up?

    1. 1

      That's a great question.

      For me, it would take more than just seeing people drop off after signing up. I'd want evidence from conversations with users.

      If I consistently hear things like, "I wasn't sure what to do next," "I didn't understand what to upload," or "I expected to try it without uploading a document," I'd feel much more confident that it's an onboarding problem.

      On the other hand, if people tell me they were simply curious, didn't have a proposal ready, or were just evaluating tools, then the issue is probably earlier in the journey—or not really a product problem at all.

      At this stage, I'm trying to avoid optimizing based on assumptions and instead let user conversations point me to the real bottleneck.

      1. 1

        Appreciate the context.

        Would be good to continue the conversation as you learn more from those user conversations.

        What's the best email to reach you on?

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