We outplayed ourselves
Our original onboarding process was a textbook example of how not to do it. The business needed to gather as much information as possible about customers’ projects, so the sign-up process felt like a full-blown quest with a dozen steps. We assumed that founders would be willing to spend 15 minutes filling out a form if it meant attracting investors.
Well… we were dead wrong
After interviewing both active users and those who dropped off, we found that 80% never completed onboarding, and 30% bailed immediately upon seeing the number of steps. The reason? Pure exhaustion.
Startup founders are constantly pitching to investors, filling out applications, and registering on endless platforms — most of which lead nowhere. By the time they landed on our platform, the sight of a long onboarding flow was enough to make them quit before even starting.
The Obvious Fixes
We started with the basics. We cut down the sign-up process to the bare essentials, added motivational nudges to complete profiles later, and threw in a bit of gamification — users earned points for filling out different sections.
We also deprioritized user profile completeness and shifted focus to the actual projects. Previously, users couldn’t create a project until their profile was fully set up. We removed that restriction. Now, anyone could create a project regardless of how much personal info they provided.
That worked — for user profiles. More people got past onboarding and into the platform. But the projects? Still empty. Founders struggled to articulate their ideas, lacked visuals, and ultimately put off filling out their profiles. The result? A graveyard of half-finished projects and disengaged users.
Why traditional handoffs fail
The traditional workflow — designers design, developers develop — assumes a clean boundary that doesn't exist. Modern products are too complex for waterfall handoffs. Edge cases multiply exponentially. Platform differences compound. Performance requirements conflict with aesthetic goals. No specification document can capture every nuance.
Static mockups lie by omission. They show happy paths, not error states. They assume ideal content, not real-world messiness. They present desktop perfection while hiding mobile complexity. Developers fill these gaps with assumptions, usually wrong ones from a design perspective.
Even the best documentation falls short. Designers document what they think developers need. Developers need what designers never thought to document. The gap between intention and implementation widens with each assumption.
The Real Fix: Just Do It for Them
Our lead engineer had a favorite saying: "If something can be skipped, skip it." So we thought—why motivate users to do something when we could just… do it for them?
Most startups already have pitch decks, landing pages, or profiles on Product Hunt. So why not pull that existing information and build their profiles automatically?
We researched the most common platforms founders use to pitch their projects and identified key data points that were already available. Then, we did what any self-respecting startup in 2024 would do—we brought in AI.
Our system analyzed uploaded documents, websites, and presentations, scraped mentions of the project across the web, and even auto-generated market and competitor insights. All users had to do was drop a link—and boom, their project profile was ready.
The Outcome: Engaged Users, Simpler Processes, and a Scalable System
Of course, not everyone was comfortable uploading pitch decks — some worried about leaks, others simply didn’t have polished materials.
For them, we kept manual onboarding but stripped it down to just the essentials, with AI-powered assistance at every step. In the test phase, we required users to review AI-generated content, but in the future, we plan to remove that step entirely.
The results? 75% of users uploaded at least one link, project profiles became more complete, and the platform finally felt alive. As a bonus, founders actually enjoyed playing around with AI, making the process feel more engaging rather than like another chore.
In the end, we didn’t just fix onboarding—we built a system that could be reused in other projects (like this one). And along the way, we learned a valuable lesson: when research shows something isn’t working, it’s probably not the research that’s wrong. It’s you.
Final result
Unfortunately I can't show the latest version, due to the terms of the agreement with the company. But I'm showing the version that was made as the first one, after we decided to start onboarding.
