Week 2: Shipped 3 features, killed my onboarding, and found my enemy
Worked through Christmas. Not because I had to, because I couldn't stop.
🚀 What I shipped:
- Free tier. Listened to Elena Verna on Lenny's podcast. Giving it away is how you earn paid users. No data yet, but feels right.
- Killed the mandatory onboarding call. Was forcing people to book a call with me before using the product. Almost nobody converted. Replaced it with a 3-min video. Friction = death.
- Proactive inbox sessions. Nori now helps you batch-process important emails when YOU decide, not when notifications demand it. You control your focus.
😱 What surprised me:
- A user started using Nori to get insights from their Google Search Console. Never designed it for that. Love when people find use cases you didn't anticipate.
🧑🏫 What I learned:
Listened to a branding expert. Best brands have enemies. If everyone likes you, you're boring.
My enemy? Notifications.
Your inbox shouldn't own your attention. Email should work like physical mail: you check it once or twice a day, not every 30 seconds. Nori is the assistant that protects your focus, not another thing begging for it.
⏭️ Next week:
Fix dark mode UI (it's gorgeous on light bg, broken on dark). Post more here and on X. Keep shipping.
Happy new year, builders. See you in 2026. 👋🏼
Trending on Indie Hackers
Shipping fast and breaking onboarding usually exposes the real enemy early — not the features themselves, but where users get confused or hesitate.
At this point, what’s the one user action you’re watching most closely to know onboarding is actually improving?
Yeah that's true! I'm watching at onboarding conversion by step now
That’s a solid move.
One thing I’ve seen help is picking one “make-or-break” step — the step where hesitation actually predicts churn — and optimizing that first.
Otherwise step-by-step tracking can turn into incremental tweaks without changing the outcome.
This is a really clean early signal, especially paired with the comments here.
What stood out to me isn’t that onboarding failed — it’s that shipping features surfaced a decision bottleneck: figuring out which user behavior actually predicts success vs which just creates activity.
When you say you “killed onboarding,” did you learn more about what users needed clarity on first, or more about what they ignored entirely? Those usually point to very different next moves.
Of course if I kill the onboarding call I lose visibility over who's using the product. Also, my onboarding process in the website is quite bad, so there's an expectations issue. But the increase was huge. Went from 0 users to 25 in one night.
Killing the mandatory onboarding call is such an underrated move. Most founders resist it because they think "but I need to talk to users!" - but forcing a call as a gate just filters out everyone who's curious but not yet committed. A 3-min video serves both audiences: the tire-kickers get enough to decide, and the serious users can still reach out.
The "enemy" framing from branding is powerful positioning. "Anti-notification" is clear, memorable, and emotionally resonant. Everyone has felt that inbox anxiety. Much stronger than "better email management."
The Google Search Console use case is interesting - that's a signal about what job Nori is actually being hired for. Sometimes the product-market fit you find isn't the one you designed for.
Curious: did the Elena Verna free tier change your activation metrics noticeably? Or too early to tell?
Thanks for your comment! Yes totally, I realized people didn't wanna do a call with me. And actually it makes sense, Nori protects your calendar, so why would you add more entropy? Regarding the free tier it's too early to tell but I hope to have some metrics for next week's update! Make sure to follow!
Ha - "why would you add more entropy" is the perfect way to put it. The product's value proposition working against the onboarding friction is such a clear signal you were asking too much.
Following for the metrics update. The free tier conversion data will be interesting - especially whether the users who convert fast are the same ones who would've booked calls, or if you're capturing a different segment entirely.
The "friction = death" insight is spot on. I'm building a tech news aggregator and wrestled with how much onboarding to force before letting users see value.
Ended up showing AI summaries immediately — no signup required for basic browsing. The conversion to signup happens when they want personalization or daily digests.
Curious: with the 3-min video, are you tracking watch completion vs actual activation? Sometimes people watch but still don't know what to do next.
That's great, I think people needs to see value before committing. And it's an excellent point about tracking watch completion but no, I'm not doing it atm.