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Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

onboard.io

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Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#21

Post by wsul »

srikrishnan wrote: post #15
quercusa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that the site is hanging waiting for GTM to load. Issues: Tracking deliverables across multiple customer divisions, having to go through customer-side project managers who don't understand the questions that are being asked, necessary documents spread all over the place, difficulty in slipping schedules as needed. Good luck!

Quoted post unavailable.

Received your cold LinkedIn message... founder to founder, spending time on building a better product is always going to yield better results than scraping your competitor's launch announcement to send cold messages to all their commenters.

If you are going to reach out, I've always found it helpful when a company speaks to their differences and in a positive tone, rather than throwing shade.

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#23

Post by jedwhite »

Congrats on the launch! In a previous life I worked on a media SaaS startup. We never solved onboarding.

The customers ranged from small independent and solo publishers through to global media companies. It didn't matter the size of the customer, we always struggled with onboarding them in an efficient way that also made them feel wanted. We also struggled with creating the expectation that our team would do everything for them, which eventually led us down the dangerous path of taking on more and more services work, which is a trap.

How does Onboard help with that kind of trade-off?

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#24

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #18
srikrishnan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You've posted repeatedly like this in this thread. That's not allowed in someone else's launch thread (YC company or otherwise)—it's extremely bad manners. Please stop now. It's maybe ok to post one comment telling people about your alternative product, depending on how you do that. More than that, it starts to be spamming.

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#25

Post by [deleted] »

wsul wrote: post #21
srikrishnan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Received your cold LinkedIn message... founder to founder, spending time on building a better product is always going to yield better results than scraping your competitor's launch announcement to send cold messages to all their commenters. If you are going to reach out, I've always found it helpful when a company speaks to their differences and in a positive tone, rather than throwing shade.

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#27

Post by jeffepp »

jedwhite wrote: post #23

Congrats on the launch! In a previous life I worked on a media SaaS startup. We never solved onboarding. The customers ranged from small independent and solo publishers through to global media companies. It didn't matter the size of the customer, we always struggled with onboarding them in an efficient way that also made them feel wanted. We also struggled with creating the expectation that our team would do everythi…

Thanks for the comment, you raise a great point.

Often times customers want transparent communication, aka: understanding what needs to happen and by when for things to stay on track.

We've seen that often times people get busy and when follow-ups and reminders are solely left to one onboarding specialist, it's possible they could lose track -- one easy solution is to automate the reminders and take it off their plates indefinitely.

Another way to show clients they have to do some of the work is simply by assigning them the various tasks. The best way to show you care about their experience is explaining what they need to do is a simple manner, providing videos, articles and other resources so they can accomplish their tasks and move onto the next one.

These are just some of the things that assist with the trade-off, happy to discuss further, feel free to email me directly: jeff@onboard.io

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#28

Post by dmkirwan »

Congratulations on the launch! I don't have much constructive feedback, other than the custom launch plan idea resonates well with me. It's something that other vendors miss IMO.

I have two questions if you don't mind:

1: onboarding is something that users should do once only. Unfortunately, engineers only see it once also. It's easy to forget there's an onboarding flow in your app as you build it. Do you have mechanisms in place to detect if somebody releases a breaking change? For example: an element you expected to exist is now gone, a url has changed, etc.

2: Can you share how you came up with the problem and if the product evolved over your time in YC? I think most engineers or PM's have had to think about onboarding at some stage so I'm curious about that.

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#29

Post by jeffepp »

dmkirwan wrote: post #28

Congratulations on the launch! I don't have much constructive feedback, other than the custom launch plan idea resonates well with me. It's something that other vendors miss IMO. I have two questions if you don't mind: 1: onboarding is something that users should do once only. Unfortunately, engineers only see it once also. It's easy to forget there's an onboarding flow in your app as you build it. Do you have mechan…

Thanks. You are right, none of the other vendors do custom launch plans. They are all building templates, which is what everyone is used to -- we built custom launch plans because we spent nearly a decade onboarding Enterprise SaaS -- we know that's what is needed ;)

To answer your questions:

1) We don't have those types of elements right now, it's an interesting idea though!

2) Yes, we faced the problem of customer onboarding as we built my last company (Ambassador Software), especially as we moved up market and realized that "lots of people needed to do lots of things" before the buyer of our SaaS could actually use it.

The product has certainly evolved during YC thanks to all of the conversations we've had with customers and prospects. We came into YC with more traction than some companies (and many paying customers) so, we had some market validation, however, it's been turbo-charged while being in YC and getting such great intro's & connections.

Thanks again for your comments, happy to discuss further!

Re: Launch HN: Onboard (YC W22) – Better customer onboarding and implementation

#30

Post by jedwhite »

jeffepp wrote: post #27
jedwhite wrote: post #23

Congrats on the launch! In a previous life I worked on a media SaaS startup. We never solved onboarding. The customers ranged from small independent and solo publishers through to global media companies. It didn't matter the size of the customer, we always struggled with onboarding them in an efficient way that also made them feel wanted. We also struggled with creating the expectation that our team would do everythi…

Thanks for the comment, you raise a great point. Often times customers want transparent communication, aka: understanding what needs to happen and by when for things to stay on track. We've seen that often times people get busy and when follow-ups and reminders are solely left to one onboarding specialist, it's possible they could lose track -- one easy solution is to automate the reminders and take it off their plat…

Thanks Jeff, better documentation and explanation materials are something we need to put together for the current project we're working on also. It's a consumer app but the same issue applies - we get a lot of support tickets coming in about how to do things that we should explain somewhere.

Good luck again with the launch!

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