The gap, the cut and the honesty rule. Somewhere in your product is the moment a new user first thinks, “Oh, this is why it exists.” Everything before that moment is a cost, and the faster you can get them there, the better. But how?
Sabeeha Banubhai is the founder of Jack Studios, a Joburg studio that’s helped 150+ tech founders launch. Her blunt framing: Users don’t owe your product patience — so every step you make them take before value had better be worth it.
The move: treat every pre-value step as a cost
Once you know the moment your product delivers value, the job becomes speed: removing everything between signup and that moment that doesn’t absolutely need to be there.
“Every extra step (too much setup, information, commitment or learning) delays value, and users don’t owe your product patience.”
How to speed up time-to-value
1. Map every step between signup and value
Write out the actual path a new user walks from the second they sign up to the moment they feel value. Every screen, every form field, every click, every decision you ask them to make.
Founders are almost always surprised by how long the list is. Steps accumulate quietly (a field added here, a setup screen there) and nobody ever goes back to count them. You can’t shorten the path until you can see the whole thing.
2. Cut every step that isn’t required to reach value
Go down the list and challenge each step: Does the user need to do this before they can experience value, or are you asking for it because it’s convenient for you?
Anything that isn’t on the critical path to value gets cut, deferred until after the user is hooked, or made optional.
3. Defer commitment until after they’ve felt value
The heaviest friction is asking users to commit something (details, setup, decisions) before they’ve received anything. You’re asking them to invest in a payoff they haven’t experienced yet.
Flip the order wherever you can. Let people reach a real moment of value first, then ask for the commitment once they’ve got a reason to give it. A user who’s already felt the value will happily do the setup they’d have abandoned on day one.
4. Replace explanation with a fast first win
Onboarding tours that explain every feature are a delay dressed up as help. They teach the product instead of delivering the value. The user doesn’t want to learn your interface — they want the thing they came for.
Strip the tour down to the shortest possible route to a first win. Get them doing the one thing that proves the product’s worth as fast as possible, and let the rest of the features reveal themselves once they’re already in.
The big payoff
Shorten time-to-value, and more of the people who sign up actually reach the moment that makes them stay. The leak during onboarding slows. The same top-of-funnel traffic converts into more activated users, because fewer of them quit before the good part.
It takes an afternoon to map and cut the path. It rescues the users you were losing in the gap between signup and value.
You might also be interested in
Want the full playbook?
This is one piece of Your Product Works. So Why Is No One Buying?, Sabeeha’s full masterclass inside the Founder Collab. The full session is a complete diagnostic for why products that work still don’t sell:
The 5 Layers of Customer Adoption — the framework for diagnosing exactly where you’re losing people
How to pinpoint the exact moment your product first delivers real value
The trust signals that quietly lose you sales — and how to audit your product for them
The “diagnose your product” tool that maps the right question to each layer of adoption
The 6-day action plan to go from “no one’s buying” to a product people understand, trust and return to
You’ll also get access to 40+ other masterclasses from SA founders and operators on sales, fundraising, UX, paid media and more inside The Founder Collab.
Get more SA tech and business news, tips and business-building workflows and subscribe to The Open Letter.
