Hashtag Monday

Director

$80m+ generated for 106 DTC brands | Unlock Untapped Revenue, without throwing more money at Zuck 😈 | Retention Marketing for DTC Brands

I’ll cut to the chase.

If you’re a 7-figure DTC brand founder, you’re missing out on what helped me achieve 30-40% repeat purchase rates for 170+ eCommerce brands in 90 days (every time)

Look…

There’s about 1 million eCommerce agencies on LinkedIn - you don’t have time to hear what they all have to say.

You know your pain points are:

1. Struggling to get customers to make repeat purchases.
2. Watching your ad spend fail to generate profitable returns.
3. Finding it difficult to retain clients despite a successful acquisition strategy.

And therefore you also know that…

These issues are draining your resources and leaving you settling for mediocre results (and agencies / consultants).

After scaling 170+ eCommerce brands…

I understand the frustration of seeing tons of money wasted, month after month, with little to show for it. 

Your competitors are scaling, your margins are shrinking, and your growth feels stunted. 

Every time you pour money into ads, you hope for a breakthrough, but it seems like you're caught in an endless cycle of diminishing returns.

The dream of becoming the top choice for consumers feels like a distant reality.

Here’s the good news:

I’ve got data on a better way. 

I specialize in transforming your existing acquisition funnel into a repeat purchase machine.

With my proven strategies, I don’t just aim to improve your numbers – I aim to revolutionize your business.

I've generated $80M in trackable repeat purchase revenue for multiple 7, 8 and 9-figure brands.

My unique approach ensures that your customers buy twice within 21 days, drastically improving your repeat purchase rates and overall profitability. 

AKA. Your CFO will love me.

I also focus on increasing your return customer rate to 30-40% within 90 days, and boosting your average order value by 20-40%.

Want to see how I’m doing it?

DM me ‘REPEAT THAT’ or ‘I actually read your about section’

And I’ll show you why every time I present to a brand founder what they’re missing in their repeat purchase stack —- they almost fire their current email team instantly.

Trust me.

I’ve seen physical *gasps* after I run DTC founders through their own 32-page, complimentary repeat purchase audit.

DM me ‘REPEAT THAT’ or ‘I actually read your about section’

If you’re a brand that actively has new customers coming in daily.

Dolapo S.

You think your B2C SaaS has a retention problem.
But actually have an onboarding problem.

Users sign up motivated. Only to click around, get confused and vanish.
You tweak UI, send more emails, and add nudges.
Nothing moves the needle.

I help you see where users bail and why, so you can fix it fast.

Here’s how:

1. 72-hour onboarding audit: pinpoints your activation leaks

2. Founder-friendly fixes: clear, specific, and easy to ship

3. Simple insights: no decks, no jargon. just clarity

I’m Product Onboarding certified, and have analysed over 100 SaaS onboarding flows.

I came from email marketing background and spent 18 months trying to “save” users post-drop-off. 

Then I realised:
No amount of great emails can fix bad onboarding.

So now, I fix the problem before it needs saving.

If you’re getting 50–500 trial signups and <10% convert, this is where you start.

DM me “FLOW”.
Let's find where your product is pushing away customers.

Moulya Gowda

Last week I changed ONE harmless-looking setting on LinkedIn… and instantly broke my entire feed.

So here’s what happened:

I saw a post warning everyone that LinkedIn automatically lets AI train on your content.

Naturally, I was like:
“Nope, not mine.”

So I turned it off.

Felt good.
Felt responsible.
Felt like I’d locked my digital front door.

But while I was already poking around the settings (classic curiosity spiral), I found something else:

Choose your feed:
⨀ Most Relevant
⨀ Most Recent

And because I’ve been taking commenting seriously lately, the greedy part of me whispered:

“Most recent = first dibs on posts. Do it.”

So I did.

Immediate regret.

Yes, I saw posts from a minute ago…
but 98% of them felt like walking into a party I wasn’t invited to.

Wrong audience.
Wrong topics.
Wrong everything.

The dopamine of “fresh posts” wasn’t worth the disorientation.

I lasted maybe 10 minutes before crawling back to “Relevant.”

Because here’s the thing:
I want new.
But I also need useful.

And the “Most Recent” setting was basically LinkedIn handing me a firehose and saying:
“Good luck.”

Because here’s what the whole experiment made me realise:

Relevance isn’t just a feed setting.

It’s the thing that decides whether someone stays, explores, or bounces.

LinkedIn showed me in 10 minutes what most B2C SaaS users feel in 10 seconds:

If the experience doesn’t match what they came for,
they’re gone.

That’s literally the backbone of good onboarding.

Show the right thing at the right moment so people don’t feel like they walked into the wrong party.

If your product isn’t showing users what’s relevant, why would they stay?

I fix B2C SaaS onboarding so trial users stop ghosting before seeing why the product matters.

Unpopular opinion:
Signup numbers are a vanity metric.

I just spent 8 weeks going through 100+ B2C SaaS onboarding flows as a new user.

Signed up, clicked around, tried to get to the first "win."

The pattern is consistent:

Most products lose users in the first 10 minutes,
not because the product is bad, 
but because the path to value is unclear, confusing, or too long.

Companies celebrate 1000 signups while bleeding money.

Why?

→ They optimise for top-of-funnel (paid ads, influencers, viral loops)
→ They ignore middle-of-funnel (onboarding, activation, habit formation)
→ Result: High CAC, low LTV, unsustainable growth

The founders who actually build lasting businesses do this:

1. Fix activation FIRST (get to 40%+ before scaling)
2. THEN pour fuel on acquisition
3. Result: Every dollar spent on growth actually compounds

The math is simple:

→ 100 signups × 50% activation × £200 LTV = £10,000
→ 1,000 signups × 10% activation × £50 LTV = £5,000

Same acquisition cost. Half the revenue.

Activation > Acquisition.

Always.

—------------------------------------------------

If you want to know if your onboarding is healthy or leaking money, I built a diagnostic: https://lnkd.in/gAX2aciJ

Takes 3 minutes.

The moment you aim for $1M ARR, your onboarding becomes your product.

Early users don’t care about friction.
They care that you exist.

But once growth picks up,
once you start attracting strangers instead of fans,
once your positioning gets sharper…

Everything changes.

You’re no longer onboarding early believers.
You’re onboarding skeptics with alternatives.

And they judge your entire product in the first 60 seconds.

This is why growth suddenly plateaus:

→ Signups keep rising
→ Trial-to-paid quietly slips
→ Revenue stops keeping pace
→ You feel “stuck” despite more attention

It’s not because your product got worse.
It’s because your onboarding stopped reflecting who you are becoming.

At $1M ARR ambition, you need an onboarding that says:
“We understand you. We designed this for you.
Here’s value — right now.”

Not:
“Click around until you figure it out.”

Your marketing tells the story of the company you’re growing into.
Your onboarding must deliver the experience of it.

If you’re pulling in a new segment with your positioning —
and activating them with an old flow —
you’re not scaling.
You’re leaking.

Ask yourself:
“Does my onboarding match the customer I’m trying to attract next?”

If not, revenue won’t follow signups,
No matter how good the marketing gets.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

If this sounds familiar, let's audit your first-run experience together. 
I help SaaS founders fix the gap between revenue and signups.

The 3 onboarding killers I see in almost every B2C SaaS product.
(After analyzing 100+ onboarding flows)

Every founder thinks their onboarding issues are unique.
They’re not.


Here’s the truth almost no one wants to admit:

Most onboarding doesn’t fail because users are lazy.
It fails because founders assume too much.


Here are the 3 biggest killers I found across 100+ flows:

1. Everyone gets the same onboarding

 No personalisation.
 No paths based on intent.
 No logic that respects what users came for.

Result? Users bounce before they ever hit value.

2. Products collect data… and then ignore it

You ask for goals, use-cases, preferences 
Only to show the same generic walkthrough.

It breaks trust immediately.

3. Time-to-value is slow, hidden, or abstract

 Founders think users “need to explore.”
 
Users want one thing:
Show me why this matters, fast.


Here’s what surprised me most:

The biggest conversion gains didn’t come from adding things.

They came from removing friction founders didn’t even realise existed.

A button.
A modal.
A step buried in the wrong place.
A moment of uncertainty.
Small things.
Massive impact.

I’ll start breaking down these patterns over the next few posts, along with how teams are fixing them.

If you're a B2C SaaS founder and want me to cover something specific…
 
Drop it in the comments.

I noticed something strange while testing 4 B2C SaaS tools this week.

Almost all of them lost me in the first 30 seconds,
 not because the product was bad, but because 

the story was unclear.

This explains why the “simple” apps with one clean outcome often outperform the feature-rich ones.

Most SaaS teams accidentally design onboarding for themselves,
not for the everyday user with 2 minutes and low patience.

That leads to:

1. Confusion

2. Drop-offs

3. Activation ceilings that no amount of paid traffic can fix


And these ceilings hit exactly when you're trying to scale.


So how do you fix this before investing in more acquisition?

By designing onboarding around the user’s mental model, not your feature layout.



Here are 5 questions I use when auditing onboarding flows (across 7+ B2C SaaS products I’ve worked with):

1. What does the user think they signed up for?

2. Can they understand your value prop in 10 seconds?

3. What steps can you delay, automate, or hide?

4. What’s the smallest action that proves value instantly?

5. What emotional reassurance does the user need at each step?


Spend 30 minutes answering these, and you’ll uncover 3–5 changes that lift activation, without building anything new.

If you're scaling to $1–10M ARR, this is the difference between “more users entering the funnel” and “more users staying in it.”

Stop teaching users how your app works.

Show them who they can become with it.


Nobody downloads Duolingo to "take language lessons."

They download it to become someone who speaks Spanish.

Nobody downloads Calm to "just breathe."

They download it to become someone who doesn't spiral at 2 AM.

Your onboarding isn't competing with other apps.

It's competing with your user's self-doubt.

"Am I really going to stick with this?"
"Can I actually become that person?"

Most apps answer with tutorials.
The best apps answer with proof.

→ Duolingo makes you complete one lesson.
Now you're "someone who practiced Spanish today."

→ Headspace guides you through one breath.
Now you're "someone who meditates."

Two minutes. One action. New identity.

That's the difference between users who stay and users who delete.

I just finished Mobile App Onboarding 101 by Appcues.

One stat won't leave me:
80% of users never return after day 1.

80%.

Your entire acquisition budget—gone.

Not because your app is bad.

Because your onboarding taught them how it works instead of showing them who they could become.

Users don't abandon apps they don't understand.
They abandon apps they don't see themselves in.


Building an app?

Ask yourself: What identity shift happens in your first session?

"They learned how it works" → you're teaching
"They became someone who [does]" → you're transforming

One keeps users.
One loses them.

Your onboarding is leaking users you paid for.

Here’s something I learned after 18 months in SaaS:

Founders don’t have a growth problem.
They have an activation problem wearing a growth costume.

You’re getting signups.

But here’s what you don’t know:

1. Where they drop
2. Why they hesitate
3. What confuses them
4. What slows their “aha moment”
5. What kills their momentum quietly


Analytics won’t tell you.
And your gut definitely won’t tell you.

Because you’re too close to your own product.

Here’s what my last 100+ onboarding analyses revealed:

Most teams are blind to the user journey.
And that’s where 60–70% of trial users disappear.
No rage-clicking. No angry emails. No warning. Just silence.


Founders look at retention.
But the problem started way earlier.

Onboarding is the revenue lever nobody wants to touch, because they don’t know what’s broken.

That’s why I built my Onboarding Health Check Quiz.

12 questions. 120 seconds.
You know if your onboarding is healthy, bleeding revenue or requires a complete makeover.

Grab the  Onboarding Health Check (link in Featured).
See where your onboarding stands..

This may lose me some business, but it has to be said:

Your onboarding is failing not because users are impatient..

but because you're asking them to solve a puzzle before they even know what picture it’s supposed to make.


In other words, you’re handing them the 1,000-piece box 
and saying, “Go.”

Of course they churn.


Try this instead:

Start with the picture on the box,the outcome they actually want

Remove steps users don’t notice, value, or remember

Guide them with clear micro-wins that build momentum


Onboarding isn’t a tutorial.
It’s a confidence-building sequence.

There’s nothing more expensive than a signup that never activates.

Because that’s not a lead.

That’s a donation.

And donations don’t compound. They don’t scale.
They just make Meta and Google richer.


Now zoom out for a second, this pattern shows up everywhere.

Founders go all-in on acquisition:

→ Big ad budgets
 → Aggressive SEO
 → Influencer campaigns

Then 60–70% of signups disappear 
Before they touch a single meaningful action.

Last week, while reviewing a set of onboarding flows, 
I hit the same question again and again:

Why are we spending so much to get people in the door…
 and almost nothing to help them succeed once they’re inside?


Because here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Founders will spend $20–$120 per signup…
But won’t spend two hours understanding why users don’t activate.

And when activation is weak, acquisition doesn’t fix it.

It just burns money faster.


Look at the logic:

1. Strong acquisition + weak onboarding = wasted budget

2. Strong onboarding + the same acquisition = more retention and  increased revenue

The traffic isn’t the issue.
 The experience after signing up is.


So before you throw more money at growth, ask a simple question:

“Do users actually reach value after they sign up?”


If the answer is no:
 
Your onboarding isn’t a minor leak.
It’s quietly setting your growth on fire.

I ask B2C SaaS founders one question:

"Who owns your onboarding?"

Most never have an answer.


Because,

Marketing brings trial users in. 
Product team ships features. 
CS took care of tickets.

Nobody owns the actual onboarding experience.

60% of trials? Dead in 3 days.

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The Battle

Dolapo S.

Moulya Gowda

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The Battle

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Moulya Gowda

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Moulya Gowda's LinkedIn Performance

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