Strategy question
How do you think about onboarding new users to your product? Looking more towards increasing the acquisition part of any product.
- Thales
- Strategy
- Easy
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What this question tests
Tests the ability to reason through user onboarding as an acquisition lever, distinguishing activation from raw signups.
How to approach it
- Clarify what acquisition means here: new signups, or signups that convert into activated, retained users, since onboarding mainly affects the latter.
- Identify the drop-off point: most products lose the largest share of new users between signup and first meaningful action, not at signup itself.
- Segment new users by acquisition source, since a user from a paid ad versus organic referral arrives with different intent and context.
- Propose reducing time-to-value: get the user to the core action (the product's aha moment) in the fewest steps, using smart defaults instead of long setup forms.
- Add personalization based on signup context, such as pre-filling based on referral source or stated goal, to shorten the path.
- Define success as activation rate within the first session or day, not just signup completion.
What a strong answer includes
- Separates acquisition, getting someone to sign up, from activation, getting them to their first value moment, and focuses onboarding on the latter.
- Identifies a specific aha moment concept rather than treating onboarding as generic tutorial screens.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume 60% of signups never complete a first core action, making that the real leverage point.
- Proposes reducing setup friction with defaults instead of adding more explanatory screens, which often backfires.
Common mistakes
- Conflating signup rate with activation, missing where the real drop-off happens.
- Proposing more tutorial content as the fix, when friction reduction usually matters more.
- Not segmenting new users by acquisition source or intent.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you define the aha moment for this product?
- How would you personalize onboarding without adding extra steps?
- What metric would you watch in the first week after a change?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop