The Crucial Role of Onboarding in Successful Product Led Growth Strategies

·Aug 03, 2026 05:02 AM·

Hi all, I wrote a post about achieving product led growth in a start-up and I am looking at the issue of onboarding. Most importantly, someone mentioned that "Most PLG strategies overlook the importance of onboarding. That great products can still fail if users aren't guided to discover all features ." What is your take on this issue of onboarding?

🙌1

3 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

jonatan
·
·
i'd push back on the quote itself. guiding users to discover all features is the instinct that produces a nine step tour nobody finishes. people don't churn because they missed feature four, they churn because they never got the single outcome they signed up for. the number i'd watch is time to first real result on their own data, not onboarding completion rate. completion is the metric that lets a team ship a worse product and still see the dashboard go up, because you can always make the tutorial easier to finish. also worth separating two things that usually get merged. activation is the user getting value once. onboarding is your team designing the shortest path to it. most plg writing is about the second, most of the churn comes from the first.
👏3
Gregory O.
·
·
Wow. Thanks jonatan this is very insightful. I like the idea of ensuring activation happens... The user gets to the Aha! Moment, as the main goal of PLG strategy, and onboarding being the careful and thoughtful design of the process to get the user there quickly
Alina S.
·
·
Gregory O. I led growth teams at Picsart, Snapchat and Upwork and I can tell you that onboarding is super important fro growth. It sets the tone, emotional resonance ( a feeling that says this product understands me) not the way around. You don't build onboarding so users understand the product, the opposite, you build onboarding so users feel understood, valued and move to first "aha moment" the moment they get a tangible value from product. Let me know if you have a specific onboarding question.
🙌2