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2 weeks ago I reviewed an app's onboarding flow for 2 co-founders with already thousands of paying users, and focusing on growth.

I spot a few "bad practices" that could cost them early churn. But they didn't seem to care, and justified every friction point with: "we drew inspiration from market references."

Long story short:

I got introduced to them through a mutual contact. They were building a direct-to-consumer app, already had thousands of paying users and were focused on growing (aka, acquisition).

Perfect timing to look at onboarding: thousands of paying users means the product is valuable and works + there is a real market for it.

So i got curious and did a thorough review.

Nothing really broken or BAD as f, but still things that could cost early churn:

• pushy and repeated trial upgrades, tedious setup phase with unexplained questions, social proof and rating prompts before any value is delivered.

• and most importantly, the user lands into a feature-heavy product with no guided path to a first meaningful win. They're on their own.

Nothing un-fixable, and nothing costly to fix.

•••

Here's the trap with applying "market references" or “best practices”: what others do 1. maybe doesn't work that well, and 2. doesn't mean it will work for us.

But the real point is about whether focusing on acquisition is the best move right now.

Having paying users doesn't necessarily mean having active users, neither happy users. Users who use the app frequently and are deriving lots of value from it (and as a consequence, become and stay loyal, and keep renewing).

Because once you realize you've only been using an app only a few times here and there and it's not that of a game-changer, you may decide to unsubscribe eventually.

So increasing acquisition when you don't know how healthy retention is can be risky. And increasing acquisition when your onboarding could be leaky can also be risky.

In both cases you're just pouring more water in a bathtub with a hole in it, so all you're increasing is short-term growth (vanity vs sanity), and the cost of the leak.

•••

This is the lens through which I see things: make sure there are no leaks, and then add more water.

Because scaling a leaky system only scales the leak.

Agree or disagree?

5 months after quitting my job, I’d never have believed I’d already be:

• closing 7 €15k clients
• getting them stratospheric results
• struggling to out-swim incoming demand

Kidding…

Truth is, Nov 27th 2025 was my last day as a full-time product designer, and I left without a real plan, let alone a pipeline. Only my objective to build my solo SaaS onboarding advisory biz.

Here’s how the past 5 months actually went:

December: helped my BFF with her baby + rested from Nov.

Jan: rested from December.

Feb: was rested so went skying.

Early March: rested from skying…

Then I got angry at myself and started getting busy. Well-rested and motivated, I was churning work in 4-5 hour days, feeling super productive and loving the freedom.

But I was super efficient and productive… at doing things that were not *effective*. All meaningful enough to keep their place on my todo list, but not relevant to my #1 goal: growing my biz.

So after a few weeks, it hit me: I was getting busy doing X, Y and Z to avoid the fear/discomfort of doing what truly mattered: A, B and C.

So I corrected course: hired a coach to be accountable to, surrounded myself with friend-advisors to challenge me and started a weekly strategy doc.

•••

Why am I telling you this?

Because the past few months I experienced what I constantly see with my clients: getting busy on the wrong things. Treating symptoms vs root causes. Doing what's fun vs what's impactful.

Almost 100% of the time, the only thing that will make a real difference is the thing we’re avoiding. And quite magically, when we do that thing many others just disappear from the todo.

For me it's: going out there, connecting with new people, growing my biz.

For my clients, it often looks like:

• releasing that beta to learn from real user feedback
• looking past vanity growth metrics
• asking churned users what they truly hoped to achieve
• fixing core features before building new ones
• fixing leaky activation before spending more $$$ on acquisition

So the question we can all ask ourselves is:

What am I avoiding doing that would truly drive meaningful results, and what’s the cost of not doing it?

That question is the “Avoidance Diagnostic” I use on myself and with every client. Doesn’t mean I/they always like the answer. But it always works wonders.

•••

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”
— Joseph Campbell

In July 2016 I experienced burnout for the first time and it taught me this:

Being good at something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for us, nor that we have to keep doing it forever.

At 8 I drew Windows 95 user interfaces on paper. My dad had built me a fake computer out of cardboard so I could slide my drawings into the screen.

Looking back it was obvious I was going to be a designer. Deep fascination for computers + tons of Lego = tech + creativity.

••• {fast forward a decade} •••

I didn't become a designer. I became a musician instead, following my parents' path because I lacked the confidence to choose my own.

10 years in, burnout forced me to pause and realize a hard truth:

The reason I had chosen music was because I was seeking approval. That's why I always felt like I didn’t belong to that tribe.

So I reconnected with that kid. Learned to code, then UI/UX, then product design. Found out I had natural strategic thinking and biz acumen. And my first day at a tech company: I knew. I was finally at the right place, among the right tribe.

I quit music for good a few years after that and never looked back.

And that’s my journey from seeking approval to seeking alignment.

•••

My point is, being good at something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for us.
What matters is what’s meaningful to each one of us, regardless of any comparisons, and what purpose we really want to choose for ourselves to pursue.

And maybe correct course now if we can… to avoid future regrets.

WOLO.

PS_

Seeking for approval is not a bad thing; we all do it. But I believe it becomes harmful when seeking approval is done at the detriment of internal alignment.

In April alone i've reviewed 15 B2B SaaS onboarding flows.

And the biggest activation move I spotted is actually the one I almost didn't see.

And it's not even inside the product.

Just because a user signs up doesn't mean they'll engage with the product right after. Meetings, other priorities, gossip breaks… life keeps lifing outside your product and tabs get easily closed.

What separates products that activate from products that leak is an off-platform system for getting users back on track.

And not with generic time-based "here’s our awesome features" drip sequences, but with behavior-based nudges that meet users exactly where they dropped off:

"You're one step away from [the thing that proves the product works]. Let's finish now. Click here."

Out of the 15 flows I reviewed in April: many had zero nudges at all. A few had time-based drip sequences. But almost none had behavior-based ones designed to keep users on track until they reach their first meaningful win (the moment where their belief shifts from “this could work for me” to “this is working for me!”).

This is one of the highest-impact + lowest-effort moves in onboarding. And from what i observe it's still not the standard.

•••

On Wednesday I’ll share how I helped 2 clients create MVP behavior-based nudge systems, so they could validate them cost-effective before investing in systematizing them.