Flow

Flow is the user onboarding agency. ⚡️ We build rewarding onboarding experiences for self-serve SaaS.

❇️ Founded the business in 2022

Founder

GrowthRadar

GrowthRadar is a SaaS insights tool that helps growth, product, CS and onboarding teams turn support conversations and behavioral data into actionable onboarding improvements. As Founder, I lead strategy, product development, and client implementation.

Key responsibilities:
▪️ Built GrowthRadar from idea to live MVP, driving roadmap, positioning, and GTM.
▪️ Developed proprietary onboarding friction mapping powered by JTBD analysis.
▪️ Led integrations with tools like Intercom, HubSpot, Amplitude, and Segment.
▪️ Worked directly with SaaS clients to surface activation blockers and reduce churn.
▪️ Created playbooks for onboarding optimization based on behavioral science and product analytics.
▪️ Shaped insights into dashboards and reports that support growth and product-led teams.

Impact:
▪️ Helped clients identify friction points causing trial drop-offs and reduced time-to-value.
▪️ Enabled product teams to prioritize fixes using real customer language and job-to-be-done context.
▪️ Positioned GrowthRadar as a fast, low-effort alternative to consulting and DIY onboarding research.

Stealth AI Startup

Working on something new in the AI x talent space — building quietly but moving fast.

We're exploring how LLMs and structured data can be combined to radically improve how teams discover, assess, and engage with top-tier candidates. Early prototypes are already delivering signal-rich results from noise-heavy platforms — without the spam.

Still in stealth, but already testing with select partners.

If you're building in adjacent spaces or curious to jam, feel free to reach out.

🧪
Hint: we’re not trying to replace recruiters — we’re giving them superpowers.

Co-Founder

Explored opportunities at the intersection of AI and SaaS user onboarding. This was the incubation and R&D phase for what became GrowthRadar, now publicly launched.

Key activities:
▪️ Ran discovery interviews and GTM validation with SaaS onboarding leaders.
▪️ Built early prototypes that analyzed support conversations for onboarding friction.
▪️ Evaluated AI tools and data pipelines for surfacing JTBD insights.
▪️ Led early client pilots and internal experiments to test product direction.

➡️ GrowthRadar officially launched May 2025.

Shareable Media

Shareable Media is a dedicated marketing and CX agency in the UK, founded in 2011.

What makes us different is that we put the customer first.

👉 We believe that marketing should be looked at in a new way. That’s why we focus on creating experiences your customers will love.

CX-Focused Marketing Director / Founder

Lightbox Content Agency

I work with Lightbox to provide consultative services around user onboarding, activation, and retention to their SaaS-based clients.

User Onboarding Consultant

Pollenary

Fractional Director of Growth at Pollenary.

Director of Growth

Product Marketing Alliance

Product Marketing Alliance is the largest global collective of product marketing managers committed to driving demand, adoption, and the overall success of their products.

Insider member

Squared Online

I work with Google Squared Online as a live class facilitator, supporting both the expert speakers and students.

Google Squared Online Facilitator

Element Human

Head of CX

CX Lead

Dubber

Head Of Marketing

Founder @ Flow

As a SaaS advisor and investor, I partner with ambitious founders to accelerate growth through exceptional customer experiences. My work spans from early-stage startups to established platforms, where I help shape go-to-market strategies and optimize customer journeys.

Leading Flow, I'm dedicated to reimagining self-serve SaaS onboarding. Our platform helps companies transform casual users into committed advocates through data-driven, personalized experiences.

Recently launched a new AI-powered research platform that revolutionizes how companies and agencies understand and serve their clients. Born from firsthand experience with time-intensive client research, our solution analyzes digital touchpoints to deliver actionable growth insights in days instead of weeks.

I'm always eager to connect with fellow SaaS founders and investors who are passionate about building customer-centric products that scale.

Great products die from bad onboarding, not a lack of features. Your roadmap is useless if users can't get past the setup screen.

This was the new challenge for a founder I talked to. He successfully built the product suite his customers were asking for to solve a major retention issue.

But now he has a new bottleneck: a rough, manual onboarding process for the new tools.

Getting users to set up their calendars, phone numbers, and pipelines was messy. The value was there, but the bridge to get to it was broken.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝗲. Not from a lack of features, but from a lack of a clear path to activation.

The fix isn't another feature. It's systematizing that "first mile" experience for the features you already have.

Find the bottleneck. Prove the fix. Your next big growth lever might just be a smoother on-ramp.

Jamie McDermott

The Chameleon team kindly (bravely? 😂) let me write my thoughts on product tours.

#plg #useronboarding #chameleon #producttour #ux

Forget vanity metrics. This framework from Jamie McDermott predicts onboarding success.

🤝 Meet EIS (Engagement, Initiative, Speed) - the three dimensions that actually matter in 2025:

ENGAGEMENT (Are users playing?) → Clicking on guidance
 Interacting with experiences → Completing contextual surveys

INITIATIVE (Are users self-motivated?) → Starting help when they need it → Coming back for more resources → Tackling optional setup tasks

SPEED (How fast do users win?) → Time-to-value under 24 hours → Days to first milestone → Early signals of long-term success

Jamie shared the EIS metrics and much more in this guest post. Check it out and bookmark it here: https://lnkd.in/dh7B62uk

My 3-step framework for fixing broken analytics:
1️⃣ Find the bottleneck.
2️⃣ Fix the process.
3️⃣ Forecast the impact.

Here's a breakdown of each step... 👇

A reactive approach creates chaos. A system creates clarity.

We're working with a founder whose team was struggling with unreliable analytics. Instead of patching individual reports, we're implementing a simple, repeatable system.

𝟭. 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗗 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗸.
First, we established a baseline by taking a snapshot of their data. This allowed us to diagnose the root cause of their reporting issues, not just the symptoms. We found flawed churn logic and gaps in how they captured customer data.

𝟮. 𝗙𝗜𝗫 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀.
Next, we're coordinating with their dev lead to implement technical fixes. This involves adjusting the timing of event calls and building a more accurate, API-based churn recognition model. The goal is to compare the new data against their team's internal benchmarks to close the gap.

𝟯. 𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗔𝗦𝗧 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁.
Once the data is clean, we'll prepare a comprehensive LAB report. This isn't just about looking backward. It's about analyzing trends to provide concrete growth recommendations and build a confident product roadmap.

A repeatable system turns data from a liability into your most valuable strategic asset.

✏️ Note: in case you're wondering if the attached image is real... it is. But, what I do is take a real dashboard screenshot, scrub out certain words, replace a few numbers, and then ask AI to anonymize it further and... tada!

#SaaS #PLG #Analytics #Growth #Startup

Every B2B SaaS team I meet is asking the same question: will AI fundamentally change the playbook for product-led growth? 🤔

From what I’ve seen, the answer isn’t “PLG is dead” or “self-serve is under threat.” 

Instead, the game is about to speed up. ⚡

The next crop of growth teams will use AI to remove day-one friction, personalize onboarding, and automate experiences that usually take months to optimize. We’re talking about products that not only guide the user, but adapt paths and deliver insights in real-time - no team of analysts needed.

A few shifts are taking shape:
• Success paths, built on the fly for each new signup 🚀
• “Agentic” products that orchestrate their own growth moments
• Predictive onboarding that closes the gap between intent and value
• A/B tests and lifecycle campaigns, automated and self-improving

It’s early, but teams skipping an AI strategy will be at a disadvantage by this time next year.

The next activation system won’t just be agile, it’ll be adaptive.

Curious: what part of your user journey do you wish would “run itself” this year?

#useronboarding #plg #saas #b2b #ai

A product leader told me, "My team is smart, we have our own analytics." But he also admitted his biggest challenge: getting true buy-in from the founder.

His perspective was common: his team was smart, they had their own analytics, and they didn't want anyone stepping on their toes. It's a defense mechanism I've seen many times.

But he also admitted a key challenge: getting true buy-in from the founder.

The founder needed to see the *story* in the data, not just the dashboards. They needed to understand the health of the business through product metrics, but that connection was missing.

This is where the right partnership changes everything. It's not about telling a product team they're doing it wrong. It's about becoming an insights partner to the founder, helping them see what's really happening in their product.

When the founder has that clarity, they can empower their product team with a shared vision.

The lesson: The best engagements happen when a product team is self-aware enough to welcome help, and the founder is committed to leading with data. Without that alignment, you're just another voice in the room.

How many features are gathering dust right now?

I looked over a SaaS engagement report last week: Most new features had less than 10% adoption. Months spent on development but users barely noticed.

Here’s the reality: There’s no sense building more until you know real users are finding value in what’s already live. Every new launch piles up missed opportunities if old fixes and ignored needs drag behind.

Before greenlighting another sprint, check one thing:
Are at least 40% of active users benefiting from last quarter’s releases? If not, close the sprint planning doc and open adoption charts instead.

Call your top customers. Drive discoveries funnel-side: Where does their journey stall? Why is this feature getting skipped? Why isn't it critical for their workflow?

Restoring momentum won’t come from backlogs alone. Get the foundation right so every future build moves retention, activation, and expansion - not just vanity totals.

No one in SaaS ever regretted skipping a sprint or two to actually help customers win.

Here’s what separates B2B SaaS teams that scale from those that stall: decisive activation in the first week. 🚀

I see the same pattern across growth diagnostics: if users don’t reach a must-have moment within days, conversion rates fall off a cliff. It’s not about squeezing value through discounts or gimmicks - price sensitivity barely moves the needle. It comes down to: Are you removing friction and front-loading value in days, not weeks? ⏳

The industry data backs this up. B2C moves quickly because they obsess over instant value delivery. B2B can’t afford to wait two weeks on trial users. The strongest engines are built on pinpointing activation triggers, integrating fast insight loops, and letting product and support work in sync. 🔄

Discounts rarely change the story. A clean, forceful activation sequence does.

Is your team crystal clear on that first meaningful action for new users? If there’s any doubt, your highest-leverage experiments should focus right there. The fastest way to revenue isn’t more users, it’s making sure more of the right ones unlock real value, right away. 💡

#b2c #saas #plg #growth #useronboarding

Before chasing your next experiment, check your foundation. 

I see too many SaaS teams racing ahead with new tests or onboarding flow tweaks, hoping for a quick win - yet when you ask how they define activation, things get murky.

You can’t spot real progress if your core metrics are fuzzy or inconsistent from one team to the next.

What does “activated” mean for your product? Does everyone agree when you’ve achieved it - and can you tie it to actual retention or expansion later? 

Strong product growth isn’t about more testing. It’s about making each experiment meaningful by anchoring it to clear, agreed-upon outcomes.

If you want experiments that actually drive revenue and sustainable retention, get everyone in the room and iron out your definitions for activation, upgrade, and churn. Only then will your experimentation engine deliver results you can trust. 

Start with clarity. Everything else gets easier from there.

li_at

JSESSIONID

Your sales team is your best product team. They're running R&D, usability tests, and market research every single day. You're just not using the data.

A founder recently told me he'd been bouncing between PLG and sales-led for years. A bad sales hire made him want to automate everything. Then a great sales rep made him question the need for a self-serve funnel.

It's a common trap.

But the real question isn't *which one* to choose. It's how they work together.

𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗥&𝗗 𝗹𝗮𝗯. They are on the front lines, hearing every objection, need, and desire. That feedback is a treasure trove for validating what your product-led engine should focus on.

Every demo is a usability test. Every sales call is market research.

The most successful companies don't see them as opposing forces. They use their sales-led motion as the feedback loop that perfects their product-led growth engine.

Everyone tells you to "talk to your users." No one tells you how to do it without derailing your roadmap for a month. Here's how.

"Customer feedback is so important, but it's so boring, it's so hard to do."

A fellow founder said this on a call, and I couldn't agree more.

We all know we need customer insights. But the process is painful. Finding the right users, scheduling interviews, paying for their time... it quickly becomes a massive, expensive project that gets pushed to next quarter.

And the next.

The problem is treating feedback as a project instead of a process.

The real win isn't in conducting a huge batch of 15 user interviews. It's in building small, continuous feedback loops directly into your product and systems.

A few things that actually work:

→ 𝗜𝗻-𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁𝘀: A simple "Did you like this experience?" with a 1-5 rating.

→ 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻-𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: "Anything we can help with?" during a key onboarding step.

→ 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀: Using tools like AskRally or ChatGPT to test messaging and concepts before you build.

Making feedback collection a low-effort, daily habit is the only way to consistently get the insights you need without derailing your entire roadmap.

#useronboarding #saas #plg #userresearch #userinterviews

'Where does your product leak revenue?' Someone asked me this, and it completely changed how I sell our service.

I was explaining our new service to a brilliant product leader, using all the right jargon:

▪️ "We remove growth bottlenecks."
▪️ "We focus on activation and churn."
▪️ "It's a data-driven analysis system."

She listened patiently and then said something that completely reframed my thinking.

She suggested I frame the service around one simple question: "𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲?"

That hits different.

It cuts through the tactical noise and speaks directly to the C-suite. Founders don't wake up worried about "bottlenecks." They wake up worried about leaking cash.

The lesson was clear: Stop selling the process. Sell the outcome in the language your buyer uses to describe their pain.

It's not about what your service 𝘪𝘴. It's about what problem it 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴.

It's always great to be part of a group of early-stage users of a tool that's on an awesome growth path - it's even better when they're a genuinely awesome team. Great work Gia team!

#gia #agency #growth

Co-founder @Gia | Growth platform for modern consultants & agencies

Excited to announce our $1.1M pre-seed funding round!
And what it means 🔽

Consultants are having their “Shopify moment”

Today, we’re officially launching Gia - the first AI-native growth platform built specifically for Consultants, Fractionals & Agencies.

The round was oversubscribed led by Panache Ventures with participation from OMERS Ventures, Success Venture Partners, East Valley Ventures, and a group of incredible angels.

But this is much bigger than a fundraise.

It’s about the shift we’re seeing play out in real time:

💡 Senior leaders are leaving corporate to go independent

💡 The freelance consulting economy is worth $647B — and growing fast

💡 Yet most consultants are running their business with duct-taped tools, Google Sheets, and tech that doesn’t fit.

We didn’t want to build another CRM or AI co-pilot.

We wanted to build the infrastructure small consultants actually need:

- To get the next client
- Keep them longer
- And grow without hiring a massive team

So we spent months shadowing consultants - literally acting as their executive assistants.

Booking their meetings. Writing their content. Managing their pipeline.

Then we built Gia.

⚡ A system of AI agents that helps consultants grow - automatically.

Earlier this year, we quietly soft-launched the MVP.

We hit our 3-month customer target in 4 weeks (50 users).

Today, dozens of firms - including ex-leaders from Google, Deloitte, BCG, and EY - are using Gia to run faster, leaner businesses.

To every consultant, agency & fractional building something of your own:

We see you.

We’re building for You.

And we’re just getting started.

—
Shoutout to Brian Kobus from OMERS Ventures (also an early Shopify and Jobber investor), who said it best:

“What Shopify did for ecomm and Jobber did for home services, 
Gia is building for knowledge entrepreneurs.” 

If this resonates, shoot me a msg.

Picture your user funnel as a relay race, but most runners hand off the baton in the first 10 meters.

That’s the reality for many B2B SaaS teams: strong features, but a silent drop-off in the opening steps.

Recently, a diagnosis for one client found:

🔺 Over half of signups left at verification. 
🔺 Fewer than one in ten ever completed a crucial-to-value step. 
🔺 We traced a 0.2% trial-to-paid conversion rate - not for lack of utility, but simply because users never made it through the basics.

Brutal, but clarifying.

Most teams obsess over feature adoption deep in the journey, missing gaps right at the start. The lowest-hanging fruit is usually a broken handoff, something amiss in onboarding, eligibility, activation.

If you aren’t tracking every step toward value, chances are you’re missing sore spots that overshadow everything else. Growth isn’t just about new features or trying new hacks. It’s about repairing the core journey so users actually get to experience your product’s value.

Where are users quietly slipping away in your flow? Are you measuring it, and is your team truly seeing it?

Still asking new users to jump through hoops before they get to see what’s great about your product? That order usually costs you adoption.

I keep running into onboarding flows where users have to verify, give details, or add payment at the very start, and only then can they see the real value of the product.

Here’s the unlock: momentum builds when a new user sees progress - something built, generated, or achieved - within minutes. That early success boosts engagement and gives them something personalized to care about.

The process I recommend rethinks the onboarding checklist:

Swap: 
Get-them-to-prove-trust up front

For:
Get-them-to-feel-wins up front

Show your value first with a quick win. Then handle signup friction once confidence and buy-in have momentum.

Enable action, show potential wins, and delay commitments as late as possible. "Required" up front? It's gating business results.

Your product shouldn’t hand out homework before showing users why they'd want to invest or comply. When documenting activation metrics, challenge where transactional moments occur, and shift essentials after strong value moments. This creates inhibitors for uncommitted users, while keeping high-intent users eager to complete next steps.

Rethink gating. Show your product's best stuff up front and make the fine print feel worth the trip through it.

To improve your product's activation, stop working on the product.

Most B2B SaaS companies focus on getting users *in*. They should be obsessed with getting them to the 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗻 as fast as possible.

When a client's trial activation is low, we don't start with their feature set. We look for the bottlenecks in three places:

▪️ 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆: How much friction is in your signup? Every extra field is a reason to leave.

▪️ 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲: Do new users know the *one thing* they need to do first? If they have to guess, you've already lost.

▪️ 𝗣𝗮𝘆𝗼𝗳𝗳: How fast can they feel the value your product promises? The "aha!" moment needs to happen in minutes, not days.

Fixing activation isn't about adding more to your product. It's about ruthlessly removing friction on the path to value.

The best onboarding flows feel invisible. Users just find themselves succeeding.

"Our analytics dashboards are broken." A founder told us this last week. He was wrong. His 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 was broken. A critical distinction.

It's an easy mistake to make when you're moving fast. You see a problem in a report and assume the report is the problem.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗼𝗺:
Inaccurate churn numbers and dashboards riddled with missing customer data. The team couldn't trust the metrics, making it impossible to understand what was really happening in the product.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲:
A simple logic flaw deep in their database. The system was programmed to log a service 𝘶𝘱𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 as a cancellation and a separate new purchase, fundamentally misrepresenting user behavior. Happy, paying customers were being marked as churned.

The fix isn't a prettier dashboard. It's correcting the underlying data logic.

Chasing symptoms leads to endless, frustrating fixes. Solving the disease is what unlocks real growth.

#b2bSaaS #Startup #Analytics #Growth #PLG

Most SaaS product tours come from a place of good intent.

But here’s what gets missed: a busy user landing in-app does not want ten floating cards leading them everywhere. Information overload leads to more drop-off, not real adoption.

Successful onboarding guides haven’t just checked a box for each feature. Instead, they map out the core task completion required for new users to see value - fast - choosing the fewest possible interventions along that path.

If you catch yourself reaching for another tooltip, pause and ask: is there anything we can subtract here while still helping users get value?

Designing less means users activate more. That’s an onboarding win I’ll always bet on.

Read the full article I wrote for Chameleon here: https://lnkd.in/dh7B62uk

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"Prove your worth in weight in gold."

A CX leader told me this when describing the pressure to justify every onboarding decision. Here's the framework we built to win the argument with data, not opinions.

Your activation problem might not be an activation problem at all.

It might be a targeting problem. Or a messaging problem. Or a "we have no idea what users actually want" problem.

You can't win that argument with opinions. You win it with data.

Here's the framework that survives scrutiny:

→ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁. Are the leads coming in the right fit for what you solve? If not, no onboarding flow can fix that.

→ 𝗦𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝗝𝗼𝗯 𝗧𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲. Don't group users by title. Group them by the specific job they are hiring your product to do.

→ 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄. Work backward from the one thing a user segment needs to accomplish. Ruthlessly cut every other step. No "add your team," no "complete your profile." Just get them to their "aha" moment.

→ 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲. Build a baseline for 4-6 weeks *before* you launch the new experience. Then, A/B test the new flow within each segment.

The goal isn't just to build a better onboarding experience. It's to build a system that proves its own value, turning data into your best defense.

#useronboarding #plg #saas #b2b #useractivation #userchurn

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