Kate Syuma reveals the hidden psychology behind user onboarding and why most companies get it catastrophically wrong. Drawing from her transformation of Miro's growth strategy, Kate shares the principles and tactics that she believes separate successful products from those that lose 60% of users before they experience any value.
Kate is the founder of Growthmates, where she advises companies on product-led growth and user experience design. Previously, as Head of Growth Design at Miro, she built and led a team of over 10 designers while scaling the company from startup to industry leader.
Through a live teardown of General Collaboration's onboarding flow, Kate exposes the subtle psychological barriers that cause user drop-off and shares battle-tested frameworks for crafting irresistible first-time experiences. Learn why most onboarding improvements fail, how to compress time-to-value from days to minutes, and the surprising truth about when fancy tooltips actually hurt more than help.
Discover why the most successful products focus on delivering value before asking for investment, how to leverage "artificial aha moments" to boost activation, and why fixing core product experience trumps surface-level onboarding fixes every time. Plus, Kate reveals the data-backed "six steps of holistic user onboarding" that transformed activation rates at companies like Miro.
Where to find Kate Syuma:
Website: https://growthmates.club/
Newsletter: https://growthmakes.news/
Plus…
If you’d like to schedule a personalized onboarding audit / teardown, just like the one Kate did for General Collaboration, you can learn more and schedule and intro call with her here!
Kate is launching her new User-centric Product Led Growth course this coming March. And ‘MVP’ listeners/readers get $120 off! Register today!
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Growth Design and Onboarding
(11:56) Kate's Career Journey and Insights
(24:05) User Onboarding: Importance and Strategies
(36:00) Live Teardown of General Collaboration's Onboarding Flow
(37:52) Optimizing User Onboarding Experience
(41:40) Enhancing User Engagement Through Personalization
(44:00) Navigating Sign-Up Friction
(48:20) Improving Permission Requests
(52:46) Creating Immediate Value for Users
(01:01:02) Key Insights for Effective User Onboarding
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