Don’t mess with the magic

I recently had a founder thank me for saying ‘don’t mess with the magic’ every week for months as he was trying to get to PMF. Actually it was a slightly more colorful phrase, but you get the point.

My point in repeating that over and over is that you have to get clear on the magic moment for a user when first discovering your product. Ideally you deliver that magic within the first minute or you have a big chance or losing that user.

For example, the magic moment for a 1–1 tutoring system is the actual interaction with a tutor. Sometimes founders make the mistake of delaying that moment by having users schedule a time. Or they miss the moment completely by showing a video of someone else experiencing the magic moment. Sadly, you can’t mess with the magic moment. It must be experienced directly as soon as possible.

In a typical funnel, you need to define activation, meaning a user that now knows enough about your product that the product should be held accountable for retaining them. Until that point, the problem is that a user has not made the emotional connection with your product necessary to sustain them through the arduous problem of learning how it works.

So make sure you define the magic moment. Other than the obvious ‘aha’ you see in their eyes, that should be the action that causes 70%+ of first time users to come back to you at least once.

That is just the beginning of your onboarding, teaching, and habit formation you need to retain them for a week or a month, but it is necessary.

One of the other useful thing about the magic moment is that if users aren’t Coming back, you don’t have the right magic moment. Their need or connection to your solution isn’t powerful enough to boost them over the pain of learning yet another new product. So keep iterating until you hit 70%+.

The other thing to watch closely is the % of users that get to the magic moment. That tells you if you are delivering it in time. Ideally 80–90% of your users see that moment the first time they discover you. In my world, where humans may be involved, the killer mistake is scheduling. The funnel drop from scheduling far outweighs the cost of dedicating a person to revealing the magic moment in almost all cases.