Why Isn't There Revenue Yet? Follow Up Story

Why Time to First Success Can be a Product Growth Lever

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are exclusive to premium subscribers of Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about a recent trend in product management: Time To First Success (TTFS)

You Closed the Deal. Why Isn’t There Revenue Yet?

What Prompted This Article?

I noticed a few product management publications commenting on:

• Time to First Value

• Time to First Success

Both terms are defined relative to customers getting value from a product.

This is a refreshing change from the Time To Value from a few years ago. The Time to Value was defined as the onboarding is done. This left the customer alone to figure out how to use the product.

After researching Time to First Success, I found a variety of ways to measure it:

Some define Time to First Success as:

• set up complete

• telemetry flowing home

• the dashboard is available

• product activated

I asked around on my team and got a consistent answer: when the customer agrees they can use the product.

In my case, it can take some time to reach Time to First Success. This is a great way to achieve customer satisfaction, but it delays the start of revenue.

I began to wonder if a product team can accelerate the Time to First Success? I wrote about a few ways to speed up customer onboarding:

I was worried that this is too much to change at one time, so I added a note at the bottom to try one or two changes.

What Happened After This Article?