The product that teaches is already losing

The product that teaches is already losing

Why it matters: Better onboarding is no longer the answer. The products pulling ahead aren't teaching users faster. They're making teaching irrelevant.

Most founders are still trimming onboarding. A tooltip here, a step removed there. Reasonable instinct.

But at a recent hackathon in California, an engineer showed something that reframes the whole game: a SaaS dashboard where AI learns who's using it, adapts the layout to that user, and updates itself over time. No configuration. No static interface. The product just figures it out.

That's not a UX improvement. That's the model changing.

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The old mental model was: user signs up, user gets taught, user (hopefully) sticks around.

The new one is: user shows up, product already knows what they need, user gets value before they've had to think.

The difference isn't speed. It's responsibility. Every step you put in front of a user is a tax. Configuration, tutorials, guided tours… all of it transfers complexity onto the person least equipped to handle it at that moment. They just arrived. They haven't decided to stay yet.

AI is starting to absorb that complexity back into the system, where it belongs. Natural language is replacing static menus. Predicted next steps are replacing user-initiated navigation. The interface is becoming execution, not exploration.

The founders who keep refining flows will lose to the ones who remove them.

The hesitation: You're building for a user who needs to learn. So you add steps, tooltips, and walkthroughs to help them get there — and each one adds a new reason to quit.

The fix — run this 3-question audit before your next release:

1. Does your offer require explanation to act on? If someone lands on your homepage or signup flow and needs to read before they know what to do next, it's too complex. The trigger should solve an immediate, obvious problem. If you're explaining, you've already lost the moment.

2. Between signup and first win, what's being configured instead of executed? Go step by step. Anything a user has to set up, decide, or fill in before getting value is a candidate for automation. What can your product just do for them?

3. Did they get value without thinking? This is the real metric. Not onboarding completion. Not time-on-page. Did the user reach their first win without having to figure something out? If they had to learn, the product didn't do its job.

One clear answer from each of these will tell you exactly where to cut next.

If your product has traffic but revenue feels off, the problem is usually in the first five minutes.

I help you remove the step that’s slowing money down so more users reach their first win.

Start with a free call. We’ll find the leak. 👇

Onboarding isn't getting better. It's getting replaced.

The products that win in the next few years won't be the ones with the smoothest tutorial. They'll be the ones where the tutorial was never needed in the first place.

Stop designing for a user who needs to learn. Start designing for a user who needs to act.

The complexity is yours to carry. Not theirs.

👋 I’ll see ya next week! — Dana

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