Why the Smartest Product Leaders Obsess Over the First Five Minutes

We’re taught not to judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it—users usually do.

That’s why so many users abandon their product experience in the first five minutes. Poorly designed, clunky onboarding leads to lost activation … leading to lost customer LTV.

Because that first experience is so crucial, product leaders at every level, including CPOs, are stepping in. They’re treating onboarding not as UX polish, but as a high-stakes go-to-market motion that drives long-term growth.

To do this effectively, they’re using data to spot friction in the onboarding journey, experiment quickly, and get users to value faster. The result is higher activation, better retention, and smarter growth. In this post, I’ll look at how top teams are rethinking onboarding as a product-led lever and what it takes to turn those first crucial moments into lasting impact.

Treating onboarding as a go-to-market motion

Think of onboarding as your product’s internal GTM. Just like a sales or marketing motion, onboarding gets the product in front of the customer—they just happen to already be in the product.

Onboarding is the first touchpoint with a company’s value proposition, especially for product-led companies. It’s where positioning meets product experience. Are you delivering on the promise that got users in the door, or are you making them dig for it?

And just like a sales or marketing motion, it’s goal-driven, measurable, and iterative. Smart product leaders give onboarding all the attention of a revenue-critical motion, not just something to ship post-MVP. They treat it like a never-ending launch plan.

What great onboarding looks like

World-class onboarding isn’t built in a vacuum—it’s a system. And at high-performing orgs, it has a few things in common:

• It drives users to core value fast, not just through setup
• It adapts to different personas, jobs to be done, or lifecycle stages
• It’s cross-functional with Product, Growth, Customer Service, and Data in lockstep

What makes these characteristics so effective is their coordinated focus on the user. Basic onboarding focuses mostly on the product: static walkthroughs that just explain what all the parts of the UI are. Focusing on the user means explaining how the user can achieve success with your product—and that focus can require some org-wide shifts in approach.

Using data to optimize onboarding at scale

So how do you start the shift toward user-focused onboarding and really making the first five minutes the most effective they can be?

You can’t fix what you can’t see—and that’s why smart product leaders rely on data to guide their onboarding decisions. They look at things like time to value (how fast users hit that first aha moment), activation rate (whether people are doing the key actions that matter), and early retention (who’s coming back in those first few days).

Digital analytics platforms like Amplitude make it easy to spot where users get stuck, see what paths lead to success, and test new ideas with real users.

• Behavioral cohorts group users by who’s getting stuck and who’s succeeding
• Funnel and pathing analysis spot exactly where friction happens
• A/B testing validates onboarding changes quickly with real users

It all adds up to a faster, smarter way to improve onboarding.

What to fix first: Common onboarding failure points

If your onboarding is underperforming, chances are one of these is at play:

• Users don’t reach value fast enough
• Success is measured by completion, not activation
• Messaging and product experience feel disconnected
• There’s no system for ongoing feedback and iteration

These gaps aren’t just UX issues—they’re also data issues! Without clear data on where users are dropping off or why they’re getting stuck, you’re essentially guessing at what’s working as well as how to fix what isn’t. But with the data, you can figure out if one of these is the root cause (or maybe something else) and start iterating on solutions.

Own the first five minutes with Amplitude

Onboarding isn’t just a step in the journey—it is the journey, because it sets the tone for everything else that follows. The best product leaders know that owning the first five minutes means owning activation, retention, and long-term growth. And they’re not guessing their way there—they’re using tools like Amplitude to build a fast, data-driven feedback loop that fuels continuous improvement.

With this level of insight, product teams can experiment quickly, iterate confidently, and turn those first moments into lasting impact. If you want smarter growth, start where it matters most: the beginning.