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About Leo Sadeq
Leo Sadeq’s first encounter with the world of business came by pure accident. While traveling through Romania and Azerbaijan, Leo happened to meet individuals who were veterans in the business sector—a world he had never considered for himself. Growing up, Leo envisioned a future in engineering or medicine, influenced by an upbringing where business was rarely discussed. Yet, these travels and serendipitous connections opened his eyes to new possibilities, setting him on an unexpected path toward entrepreneurship.
The PLG principles Leo covers in this episode have directly influenced his latest venture, Ascend-ai, an AI automation agency that automates growth loops for e-commerce brands through AI-driven sales, data, marketing, and operations systems.
Why Frictionless Product-Led Growth Onboarding Destroys Conversion Rates
Every B2B tech founder I’ve worked with over the past decade has told me the same thing: “We need to make onboarding effortless.”
They’re wrong.
And the data proves it.
55.4% of SaaS companies score themselves below 5/10 on free-to-paid conversion capability, despite spending countless hours removing every possible friction point from their user journeys. Meanwhile, companies like UserFlow achieved $4.5 million ARR with just three employees by doing exactly the opposite, introducing strategic friction that forced users to invest in their success.
As someone who has ghostwritten educational email sequences for B2B tech startups from seed to Series C, I’ve observed this pattern repeatedly: Companies that optimize purely for speed create users who disappear just as quickly as they arrived.
The Dangerous Myth of Frictionless Onboarding {#myth}
The product-led growth movement has a dirty secret nobody talks about.
While evangelists preach about reducing time-to-value and eliminating friction, 90% of users churn without a strong onboarding experience. The average B2B SaaS activation rate sits at just 37.5%, and the industry average free trial conversion hovers between 14-25%.
These aren’t random failures. They’re predictable outcomes of a fundamentally flawed philosophy.
The problem isn’t that onboarding has too much friction—it’s that most onboarding has the wrong kind of friction.
Leo Sadeq, who’s helped multiple PLG companies optimize their product development lifecycles, puts it perfectly:
“The goal of user onboarding isn’t to get more people to experience your product’s value as quickly as possible. It’s also to help them adopt new product habits. Habit-formation requires some friction.”
Think about the last habit you successfully formed. Whether it was going to the gym, learning a new skill, or adopting a productivity system, it required effort. That initial resistance wasn’t a bug—it was a feature that separated genuine commitment from casual interest.
Why “Effortless” Creates Effortless Churn {#effortless-churn}
Here’s what happens when you strip all friction from onboarding:
You attract tire-kickers, not customers.
When signup takes 30 seconds and requires zero commitment, you’re not filtering for intent. You’re optimizing for vanity metrics that don’t predict revenue. 63% of customers take the onboarding period into consideration when deciding to subscribe, meaning they expect a substantial experience, not a drive-through.
You skip the learning phase.
Trying to force value delivery in as short a time as possible isn’t always a good thing. It’s a bit like trying to cram for a final exam. Sure, you might pass the test, but did you learn anything?
Real adoption requires users to rewire their existing workflows. When you short-circuit this process, users never develop the muscle memory needed to make your product indispensable.
You eliminate investment psychology.
The more effort someone puts into something, the more they value it. This isn’t startup folklore—it’s the IKEA effect in action. When onboarding is genuinely effortless, users have no psychological investment in making it work.
The Companies Getting Friction Right {#friction-right}
Let me share what I’ve learned from working with successful B2B tech companies that understand strategic friction.
Wave’s Smart Qualification Process
Wave, an invoicing and payroll software company, asks: “Hey! What would you like to do in Wave? Choose a starting point” during the signup process. This single question adds 15 seconds to onboarding—and increases conversions by personalizing the entire experience.
Canva’s Template Selection
Canva shows relevant design templates to users based on their responses to their sign-up questions. Some might consider this step unnecessary. It’s one extra screen that new users see before creating a new design with Canva. However, by suggesting relevant templates, this step helps accelerate the design process and enables new users to experience the product’s value quickly.
The Pattern That Works
Companies with the highest conversion rates share three characteristics:
- They ask qualifying questions upfront to segment users appropriately
- They require small commitments that increase psychological investment
- They celebrate progress milestones to reinforce the value of continued effort
As Leo Sadeq explained when discussing his experience with PLG optimization:
“I would say it’s the. I would say it’s probably the attention to details. Like I can’t just let things fall into the cracks because they will just come back and just bite us. At some point in the pricing or messaging or adoption or awareness something is going to happen.”
This attention to detail is precisely what distinguishes successful B2B tech content strategies from generic approaches that treat all users uniformly.
The Three Types of Good Friction in Produt-Led Growth Onboarding {#good-friction}
Not all friction is created equal. Here’s how to distinguish between helpful resistance and harmful barriers:
1. Directional Friction
What it is: Steps that guide users toward their next action
Example: Setup wizards that collect information to personalize the experience
Why it works: Users learn your product’s logic while providing data you need to serve them better
2. Investment Friction
What it is: Small efforts that increase psychological commitment
Example: Uploading a company logo, connecting integrations, or inviting team members
3. Educational Friction
What it is: Interactions that build product literacy
Example: Interactive tutorials that require users to complete actions rather than just watch
Why it works: Active learning creates stronger neural pathways than passive consumption
The Real Enemy: Unnecessary Friction {#unnecessary-friction}
Don’t misunderstand me. Friction for friction’s sake is stupid.
Eliminate these friction points immediately:
- Email verification before trial access (“I can verify later—let me experience value first”)
- Mandatory fields that don’t impact personalization (Company size when you serve all segments equally)
- Feature tours that explain what buttons do (Instead of why they matter)
- Multi-step signup flows for simple products (Save complex collection for after value demonstration)
Leo Sadeq’s experience with optimizing PLG funnels shows the importance of this distinction:
“The effortless onboarding at that time is really crucial now there are so many types of onboarding. But that’s pretty much the short answer I would say brief answer. Hopefully once we do all of these things, virality will happen.”
How to Design Strategic Friction Into Your Onboarding {#design-friction}
Based on my experience ghostwriting onboarding sequences for funded B2B tech companies, here’s the framework that consistently drives higher conversions:
Step 1: Map Your User’s Job-to-be-Done
Before designing any onboarding flow, understand exactly what success looks like for each user segment. The best way to determine your ICP is by talking with users and selling your product — you have to go beyond quantitative data. If you own the onboarding experience, you need to be doing this work. Don’t outsource it.
Questions to ask:
- What problem brought them to you?
- What does their current workflow look like?
- What would need to change for them to consider this successful?
Step 2: Design Progressive Commitment
Structure onboarding as a series of small investments that build toward larger commitments:
- Week 1: Basic setup + first value demonstration
- Week 2: Integration or team member invitation
- Week 3: Advanced feature adoption
- Week 4: Upgrade conversation (with usage data as proof)
Step 3: Measure Engagement Quality, Not Just Speed
Track these metrics instead of pure time-to-value:
- Feature adoption depth (not just breadth)
- Return visit frequency
- Support ticket sentiment (frustrated or curious?)
- Time between signup and upgrade conversation
The LinkedIn Content Strategy Connection {#linkedin-connection}
Here’s something most PLG content misses: Your onboarding experience becomes your best content marketing asset.
When I help C-suite leaders develop LinkedIn content strategies, the most engaging posts always come from real user stories—the challenges they faced, the “aha” moments, the incremental wins. These stories don’t come from effortless experiences. They come from meaningful journeys.
Smart onboarding creates shareable moments:
- Setup wins worth celebrating
- Problem-solving breakthroughs
- Team adoption stories
- Quantifiable improvements
Each friction point overcome becomes a story worth telling. Each investment made becomes proof of value received.
The Economic Reality of Strategic Friction {#economic-reality}
Let’s talk numbers. Companies with self-serve revenue score 25.9% higher on free-to-paid conversion capabilities than those without. But here’s what the data doesn’t tell you: the highest-performing PLG companies intentionally slow down their onboarding.
Why this works economically:
- Higher-intent users convert at 3-5x the rate of drive-by signups
- Engaged users require 60% less support than rushed users
- Investment-heavy onboarding predicts 40% higher LTV than frictionless flows
B2B SaaS companies with a dedicated onboarding specialist see 70% faster time-to-value, not because they eliminate friction, but because they optimize for the right outcomes.
Building Your Anti-Effortless Onboarding Strategy {#anti-effortless-strategy}
Ready to stop optimizing for speed and start optimizing for success? Here’s your action plan:
Phase 1: Audit Your Current Friction
Identify harmful friction:
- Steps that don’t teach or qualify
- Information requests with no immediate payoff
- Technical barriers that add no strategic value
Preserve helpful friction:
- Qualification questions that enable personalization
- Setup steps that increase investment
- Learning interactions that build competency
Phase 2: Segment Your Onboarding Paths
Different users need different journeys. Onboarding isn’t one-size-fits-all. Tailor flows to different user types (e.g., SMB vs. enterprise) and goals to maximize engagement.
Individual users: Focus on personal productivity wins
Team purchasers: Emphasize collaboration and administration features
Enterprise prospects: Highlight security, compliance, and integration capabilities
This segmentation approach is critical for educational email course development that drives real behavior change rather than superficial engagement.
Phase 3: Design Investment Sequences
Create onboarding that asks users to invest progressively:
- Information investment (tell us about your use case)
- Time investment (complete this setup sequence)
- Social investment (invite a team member)
- Process investment (integrate with existing workflow)
Each investment should unlock new value while increasing switching costs.
The Future of Product-Led Growth Onboarding {#future-plg}
The companies winning at product-led growth in 2025 won’t be the ones with the fastest onboarding. They’ll be the ones with the most thoughtful onboarding.
83% of B2B buyers say slow onboarding is a dealbreaker—but “slow” doesn’t mean “poorly designed.” It means taking the time needed to create lasting adoption rather than superficial activation.
As someone who has helped B2B tech companies design educational email courses that drive real behavioral change, I can tell you this: The fastest way to value is rarely the straightest line.
Your Next Steps
Stop measuring success by how quickly users reach their first “aha” moment. Start measuring by how many still remember that moment thirty days later.
The future belongs to PLG companies that understand a fundamental truth: Friction isn’t the enemy of conversion—meaninglessness is.
Build onboarding that requires investment. Create experiences worth talking about. Design friction that teaches rather than blocks.
Your users—and your conversion rates—will thank you.
Ready to transform your PLG onboarding strategy? I help B2B tech startups design educational email courses and LinkedIn content strategies that turn initial friction into lasting engagement. The companies achieving 5.31%+ conversion rates aren’t doing it by accident—they’re following systems that prioritize meaningful adoption over superficial metrics.
What onboarding friction point in your product could be creating more value than you realize?
Frequently Asked Questions {#faq}
What is strategic friction in Product-Led Growth onboarding?
Strategic friction refers to intentional steps in the onboarding process that require user investment (time, effort, or information) but provide value in return. Unlike unnecessary friction that blocks progress, strategic friction builds user commitment, enables personalization, and improves long-term retention. Examples include qualification questions, setup wizards, and integration requirements that enhance the user experience.
How much friction is too much in B2B SaaS onboarding?
The optimal amount of friction depends on the complexity of your product and the user segments. Simple tools should minimize friction to under 3 steps, while complex B2B platforms can support 5-7 meaningful steps. The key is to ensure that each friction point provides immediate value back to the user through personalization, education, or enhanced functionality.
What’s the difference between good friction and bad friction in onboarding?
Good friction serves three purposes: it directs users to their next action, requires investment that increases commitment, or educates users about the product’s value. Bad friction includes unnecessary form fields, email verification before trial access, feature tours that explain obvious functions, and mandatory steps that don’t impact the user experience.
How do you measure the success of strategic friction in onboarding?
Instead of focusing solely on time-to-value, measure engagement quality through feature adoption depth, return visit frequency, support ticket sentiment, and time between signup and upgrade conversations. Track completion rates for each friction point and correlate with long-term retention and conversion metrics.
Should B2B SaaS companies always use progressive onboarding?
Progressive onboarding is most effective for complex B2B products that require users to learn new workflows and processes. However, simple productivity tools may benefit from immediate value demonstration. The decision should be based on the complexity of your product, the technical sophistication of your users, and the switching costs associated with existing solutions.
How does strategic friction affect free trial conversion rates?
Companies implementing strategic friction typically see 15-30% higher conversion rates from qualified users, even though total trial volume may decrease by 20-40%. The trade-off favors quality over quantity, resulting in higher lifetime value and lower churn rates among paying customers.
What role does onboarding play in a product-led growth strategy?
Onboarding is the foundation of PLG success, serving as the bridge between user acquisition and retention. Poor onboarding contributes to the 90% user churn rate, while thoughtful onboarding experiences drive the 37.5% average activation rate higher and enable the self-serve revenue growth that PLG companies depend on.
Key Statistics Summary
Product-Led Growth Onboarding Performance Benchmarks:
- 55.4% of SaaS companies score below 5/10 on free-to-paid conversion
- 90% of users churn without strong onboarding experiences
- 37.5% average activation rate across B2B SaaS businesses
- 14-25% industry average for B2B free trial conversions
- 63% of customers consider onboarding when deciding to subscribe
- 83% of B2B buyers consider slow onboarding a dealbreaker
- 70% faster time-to-value with dedicated onboarding specialists
Economic Impact of Strategic Friction:
5.31%+ conversion rates achieved by top-performing companies, understanding that fosters genuine psychological connections with buyers.
25.9% higher conversion rates with self-serve revenue capabilities
3-5x conversion rates for higher-intent users vs. drive-by signups
60% less support required for engaged vs. rushed users
40% higher LTV from investment-heavy vs. frictionless onboarding
Some areas we explore in this episode include:
Listen to the episode.
Related links and resources
- Check out more about Leo and his work
- Learn from Nick Lumsden – How to Use Product Led Growth to Easily Supercharge Your Business
- Learn from Carl Pihl – How to Create Luck, Use Product-Led Growth And Customer Needs to Fuel Growth
- Learn from Casey Sullivan – How to Leverage a Product-Led Growth Strategy to Boost Your Results
- Learn from Andy Culligan – Marketing Sales Alignment: The 208% Revenue Growth Secret
- Check out the article – B2B Product Positioning: How to Stand Out and Drive Revenue Growth
- Checkout the article – Thought Leadership and Innovation: Navigating Business Growth
Connect with Leo Sadeq
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