Jim Zarkadas (00:00) Hey, I'm Jim, and this is the Love at First Try podcast, a podcast for SaaS CEOs and developers that truly want to learn more about design and care about it, but there are no designers that find it too complex. In every episode, we discuss how to design products that become sticky and unforgettable. We dive into the topics of taste, UX, growth, and conversions, and we share practical tips and frameworks you can add into your development process. Enough with the intro, so let's dive into today's episode. Jim Zarkadas (00:26) So yeah, thanks a lot for joining the podcast and making the time today. And as I mentioned, the first thing we always start with is by introducing yourself and like your story and also what you're working on at the moment and who are the people that should kind of not listen to you, but like who are the people that should let's say buy from you? Like what are you offering at this moment and to who so that it's very clear for the audience as well, for the people who are listening. Kate Syuma (00:51) Absolutely. Thank you, Jim, for having me. Appreciate that. So I'm Kate. I'm founder of GrowthMates, which is my advisory practice, product led growth advisory primarily for B2B SaaS, working on intersection of POG, activation, user experience. And my mission there is to help everyone create meaningful experiences that delight users, not just, know... boost your revenue because my personal background comes from product design and I'm always happy to talk about design. I've been at Miro for over six years where I learned a bunch of things that prepared me to do what I'm doing these days. And primarily I'm working with post-product market feed companies, Sirius A +, ⁓ also recently started working with my first Fortune 500 company client, which is Autodesk. which is super exciting for me. And in the past, I think over the last couple of years, I worked with over 30 P2B, B2C companies, like ManyChat, like Dealfront. And I also partner with brands these days because I've built a following somehow by actually not... expecting that. So I just shared a lot of knowledge, lot of frameworks, a lot of things I was creating with the community on LinkedIn, my newsletter. And then after a while, the audience grew and now I have a lot of brand partnerships with companies like Framer, Mobin, Amplitude. Like, you know, the products that I really love. So I think this is another most lovable job that I'm doing. And as you asked about offering, so primarily Jim Zarkadas (02:28) Mmm. Kate Syuma (02:32) It's about enabling POG foundation, working on activation and user onboarding, because this is the most problematic area with product-led growth, and brand partnerships, meaning helping your product become more visible to others. And I'm doing this in primarily advising formats, sometimes trainings for enterprise companies and stuff like that. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (02:40) Yeah. Nice, great stuff. Also really interesting brands, the ones you're working with. And on what you said also on the sponsorships, it's really nice. Like you actually get to serve the stuff that you love and then have companies you admire to actually support you. Yeah, it must be a super nice feeling, Kate Syuma (03:12) And absolutely, you know, I would encourage anyone to think if you'd like to start becoming a creator these days, because now it's becoming super easy to start creating, but also it's your long-term asset, like the audience, your network is your long-term asset that will stay with you. And for me, I didn't see any returns on like doing my podcast on newsletter, The Growthmates, for a year. I was like... Jim Zarkadas (03:24) Mm-hmm. Kate Syuma (03:40) a bit frustrated even, but then, for example, even Autodesk found me because of my newsletter. I couldn't believe that. I felt, whoa, finally I see the return. But then all of these brand partnerships came out of this as well. So in the long term, it pays off, but you really need to be, how I say, consistent and committed to that for at least a year and better a couple of years. Jim Zarkadas (03:42) Yeah, yeah. Mm. The return, yeah. Yeah, and I'll add a small, another small item on this from my personal experience, faith is a big part of the process as well, because like usually we end up like, we stop committing something usually when we lose faith into that. So yeah, believing into the process yourself, the thing you're building on, I've seen like, from my personal journey, that is a big, sometimes can be a big blunder. Like once doubt kicks in, it can really break the consistency of many things in life. Kate Syuma (04:13) Mm. Mm-hmm. I've been there, I've been there, I know, yeah. Jim Zarkadas (04:33) But yeah, really good stuff. we're pretty kind of a similar industry. We're more like on design execution, but from a growth point of view, like growth focused design. And what I really liked about you and wanted also to invite you on the podcast is that you talk about growth, but delight as well. So it's, you're not the typical growth person obsessed with growth and how you can drive conversions, but you're more like, Hey, we can do this. But the main way to do it is just make the product more delightful and sure. Put all the growth best practices over there that can drive more activation. yeah, I feel like we're really aligned in terms of mentality and how we perceive growth and design. And that's why I was really excited also to talk to you as well today and go have the chance to actually go deeper into design, delight, growth, and so on. Kate Syuma (05:12) Oh yeah, I appreciate that. I just want to say that I defined, finally, I defined the name for what I'm doing, the concept of like what I'm trying to share with companies and they call it user centric product growth. Now it becomes very clear to me why I'm doing that, what I'm doing, because previously I had a little bit like also I didn't fully understand, I'm like a fully positioned to be a POG advisor. doesn't fully reflect who I am. So after I defined that term, user centric product growth, it became so much easier for me to communicate that, to package that. And also it's maybe for new founders who are listening to us, like finding your niche and packaging yourself very specifically so important. Otherwise it's like it worries you, it bothers you every day. Like, who am I? What am I doing? Jim Zarkadas (05:44) Mm. Yeah, true, Hmm. Kate Syuma (06:08) And then other people also don't understand who you are and what you are doing. Jim Zarkadas (06:12) Very, very true. I fully, fully, agree. And on these topics, like I wanted to start with the first question, talking about like the delight and the design approach you have. So one thing of the delight is actually the taste, right? So one of the first topics that I wanna discuss is taste and talking about defining things, I would say, I wanted to ask, how do you define taste? Like, what are the thoughts that come to you when I ask you this question? Kate Syuma (06:35) You know, I was thinking about that and in Russian, which is my native language, there is a very good word to define what is taste and there is no translation to English actually, so I will try my best. So actually, taste, it comes from exposure to many things. So imagine like you're absorbing a lot of things from the nature, from the environment, from other people, from... Jim Zarkadas (06:43) Mmm. Okay. Kate Syuma (07:00) visual assets, not visual assets from everything in the world. And this is how you train your muscle, you train your taste muscle. And in my opinion, this is like, this is the exposure to the variety of things that then trains your visual literacy in a way, if we are talking about design or product building in a way, when it comes to product building in particular. Jim Zarkadas (07:21) Mm. Kate Syuma (07:25) I believe we should be just super curious all the time and keep an eye on all the players, all the best players we know, we see are like emerging or are pretty old already, you know, Notion, Figma, Canva, companies like that. So I had an imaginary list in my mind of let's say 10, 20 products companies that is updating all the time, but there are always like some seeds are Jim Zarkadas (07:41) Mm-hmm. Kate Syuma (07:54) taken by some companies for many years and I'm keeping an eye on them all the time. Like what they're doing, how they're changing their brand positioning, how they're changing their product, what is happening, like trying to capture all of these references, organize them in a way. And it's like, you know, collecting, like, know, in fashion in order to become like, in order to present your taste, you need to collect a lot of items. You need to have this collection and in product world, I believe we all. Jim Zarkadas (08:09) Hmm. Mm. Kate Syuma (08:22) should have these collections and we should revisit them, refresh them. And it takes years actually to build that muscle, to train that muscle. And over time, yeah, I think it becomes just better and better. Jim Zarkadas (08:35) Yeah, yeah, exposure, I fully, fully agree. It was a personal story on this, but like... on another context, like for example, the place that I live, like one of the reasons that I wanted to move to a country like the Netherlands originally come from Greece, I come from the south of Europe. It's also like a beautiful country, like with beautiful islands, many people love it, but it's, let's say that it's best for holidays, especially during the tech and like living in Athens, I could really, because it's the main city that most people live, it's not very well designed, right? It's just a huge piece of concrete. That's a way to describe it. Whereas the Netherlands is like really beautiful, well designed. Like I think Kate Syuma (08:48) Mmm. Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (09:09) urban design is like one of the top countries in the world. It was always a big inspiration for me and I really feel like when I surround myself with a beautiful office space, for example, a nice community, a nice country, just makes me better and helps me develop my taste. So this whole idea of exposure is something that I can really relate to what you just said. And like one of the core strategies that I have in life, make sure that I'm exposed to the right environments essentially to achieve the goals that I have. Kate Syuma (09:37) Yeah, I'm also lucky to live in the Netherlands and I think it changed my, it changed me like really, really dramatically since I moved here almost five years ago. It's about the environment, one thing, and then it's about the mindset of people, the attitude to things, everything you see in like every single place. So taste comes not just from the... Jim Zarkadas (09:57) Hmm. Kate Syuma (10:01) from the visual element, actually. It comes from other layers, ⁓ like how you talk, who you talk to, how they react. Yeah, so it's like a 5D experience, a sort of. And I think important thing is about noticing as well. Like sometimes you can live in the Netherlands or any similar country, but just don't notice these things. So noticing is another. Jim Zarkadas (10:05) Hmm from the full experience. Yeah Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Kate Syuma (10:27) important thing to train it. Jim Zarkadas (10:27) Very good points. Yeah. Yeah, the observation muscle to actually be able to observe the details and deconstruct what makes it really great. Like, okay, why does it feel so good? What are the elements that make it so good? Yeah, very interesting points. And also like that's something I relate to as well. Like the part of changing you, like on how you think and so on. When it comes to taste, many people say like there is this big, it's not really a trend, it's something that many people say, that in the world of AI, taste is gonna be a core differentiation, right? I'm also one of the people that are claiming this and I believe it, but I'm curious like, what is your opinion on this topic? And if you agree, why do you agree? How do you see this? Kate Syuma (11:11) Yeah, let's talk about that. So I will think out loud. I don't have a strong opinion. I will just, you know, brainstorm on that, on that topic. So in the world when you can literally build or create anything from just one prompt, the prompt itself, the idea itself and how you phrase it or position it becomes the leverage. And then... Jim Zarkadas (11:32) Mmm. Mmm. Kate Syuma (11:34) Let's say like there is a person who is like trying to build something, has an idea, but describes it in that way. And then when you review the outcome that AI is creating for you, this is about iterations and there is one path is like, okay, accepting everything, not iterating, just using the best practices that I think any platform like Levelball. Replit or any other tool is using the majority of practices, the majority of things that have been created and just common language. All the apps seem to look pretty similar these days with pretty similar UI. And there is another person who will iterate a lot, who will challenge this concept, who will try to train it with absolutely different materials. And this is visible. We can differentiate software like that. You can find a vibe coded product that has absolutely generic typography, generic UI. It's clean, it's nice. And I love that there are less shitty products out there because like they are using just, you know, defaults and these defaults are easy to use. But then when you see another design, which is more like authentic, yeah, it becomes... way more visible among these generic examples that have been created. So it's, don't know, whenever, when it comes to real examples, I really love what Tobias is building with my mind, for example, from the visual perspective, like how well designed every element is, like how they're caring about the interactions, visuals, UI, the animations, the typography, the communication, like the language, even the copy. Jim Zarkadas (13:09) Mm. Kate Syuma (13:17) everything that is translated through the product is visible, like there is a designer behind that. So, and I think anyone can be a designer. I don't mean like only product designers can do things like that, but people who care probably, people who pay attention to these details, I think they might be like on the position when it's important right now because Jim Zarkadas (13:23) Mm. Hmm. Kate Syuma (13:40) So many things can be created without paying any attention to them. And yeah, I think that becomes something to invest in, like train it in your, in your approach. Jim Zarkadas (13:44) Mm. Yeah, I really like how you describe it, that you actually. made it so explaining it in such a practical way that when anybody can, in theory, create a product from a product, like, of course, a bit of oversimplification on how to build a SaaS, but like, let's say in theory, like, this is true, but what you write in that prompt is actually what's gonna make the difference. And what you write in that prompt really depends on your taste, how you perceive things, how you explain things, and what is the direction you're gonna give these tools. So yeah, the fact you explain it in the context of the prompt, I think, makes it really on point. That was a really nice, really nice way to explain it. And I personally fully agree with everything. Essentially, with AI, there more products that can show up in a specific niche and industry and solve the same problem. So what makes them different is the quality. And the quality depends on the taste. And in my mind, I haven't used it yet, but I've seen it from Tobias, and it looks very, very interesting. And there's also one thing that I'm happy about that I wanted to comment on is that personally as a designer, I really miss the old days of iOS. where there was an insane amount of craft on every UI detail, like the skevomorphism, people would go crazy. There was a now that I remember some developers made in Greece that went viral. The ice team were back then, like phones were pretty stupid. So you could blow into your microphone on the iPhone and then it would get like a foggy window, like in the, in the shower. So it was just a fun app and then you would do this and then you would remove the, the, all the human and the fog. And it was pretty cool. And it was just fun, playful. very focused on the craft, let's say. So this is just a random, random example. And I feel like now with AI, this is going to become a competitive advantage, which means that more companies will invest. So I expect to see more delight and more beauty into the products. So that's something that I expect to happen because of AI that makes me personally excited because I feel like people will be forced to invest into the craft and this will create more beauty inside the digital world in a way. Kate Syuma (15:22) Mm. No, I hope so because like AI really speeds up the prototyping part. I now work with several clients where designers are like using different AI platforms to prototype immediately, like without Figma basically, or they are using Figma Make directly to visualize and, you know, put these things into shape. And sometimes I think the tricky or risky part here is like... chasing enormous speed and sacrificing still like the same dilemma, sacrificing even better quality because now it's possible to create good enough product in days, like not the product but like a feature, a solution in days, maybe in a day even, while previously it took longer. And then the team expect just to ship more and more and more and there is no space to double down. on that quality basically. it's, yeah, it's something I see and I think the change will happen when, know, how any change is happening in the industry when the consumers or the audience or the users are getting to the point of not being satisfied anymore with what we are delivering to them. Like why skill morphism was... shipped like or changed into flat design probably because like, you know, there was a point of like over consumption of that thing and then there was a new trend and it was well received. So with ⁓ this generic UI, as they say, like now all the products look almost the same. I believe we will end up in situation pretty soon when our users will be just... I cannot see the difference between these two products. Why I need to choose this over a competitor? And like, this might motivate companies to double down on the visual craft and say like, okay, let's do better. Let's differentiate from the visual positioning and like even cooler interactions. Yeah, but I still see like the situation that... Jim Zarkadas (17:36) Yeah, exactly. Hmm. Kate Syuma (17:48) many companies, many startups look very much similar. But I don't see this as a big, big problem. I'm not super disappointed because previously we had just a lot of shitty products out there, built because of lack of knowledge about very, very simple things like paddings, visual hierarchy. And now... Jim Zarkadas (17:50) 100 % yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kate Syuma (18:13) Hopefully now there are no, like I rarely see these products. These products probably are the legacy products who haven't ever heard about AI yet. And they're still like old websites, old design language, but I think they will not survive in the long run. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (18:22) Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, fully, fully agree. And indeed, it's a two-sided thing. You can see it as like, quality is going to go up, or like actually more people are going to get greedy and going to be obsessed with like add more, add more, move faster, move faster. So yeah, there are two ways to use the power of AI. Talking about AI, I wanted to ask you because I've seen you've been talking about Orbit and different onboarding tools, and you're really into the space of growth, design, and activation. How do you see AI changing? I've seen a lot of posts of yours talking about the topics. I was really curious to dive into this a bit deeper and ⁓ ask you pretty much how do you see onboarding experiences changing because of AI? Kate Syuma (19:05) Yeah. Absolutely. I'm keeping all my eyes on this topic right now. I'm so curious to see how it's going to evolve, but let me do a couple of steps back. So first of all, the best onboarding is when we actually don't need that. It's like when your product is so self-explanatory that you don't need to over-educate your user. But of course, it's not the possibility in majority of B2B complex SaaS. This is the first concept. Another concept that I believe is the best onboarding is human onboarding. So we still cannot fully replace the quality or the satisfaction from the human being onboarding you to the product in a very personalized way. No tooltip, no checklist, nothing will replace that. This is why traditionally in sales-led approach, we are onboarding everyone like hands-on. talking to them, having a nice conversation because we are humans after all. But what started changing and it started changing even earlier. I think four years or five years ago at Miro, we were redesigning the onboarding and I came up with the team, we came up with a nice concept of so-called Robo collaboration when there would be a pre-recorded customer success manager, real human who we pre-recorded. but we put these recordings and these mini guidance on the board to collaboratively onboard you into Mira. And we wanted to blend this human touch and self-service onboarding experience that time. And that was so well received, qualitatively, we had such a huge amount of positive feedback that I realized again, like human components should be in place somehow. Jim Zarkadas (20:43) Hmm. Okay. Kate Syuma (21:01) But that time there was no AI, we couldn't understand how to scale that solution, how to create like 10 versions of this guide for different segments or how to localize it. It's pretty difficult. But recently we started seeing more AI solutions that can help us with that. So one of them, for example, is very nice AI voice assistant, which is like called ⁓ Core. They have a product, is called Obby, Obby by Core. And basically, yeah, yeah, basically this is like an AI voice assistant that unboards you with the voice to the product. So you can share the screen and like in a video call, they will see everything you are doing and will guide you in a very tailored way. Like what you need to do, where you need to go. If you are going the wrong direction, will... Jim Zarkadas (21:31) Yeah, OB, yeah. Kate Syuma (21:54) tell you like you need to go here and there. And the voice is like pretty much enough. It's sufficient enough for the onboarding experience. doesn't need to be a real or human or like AI video avatar. So it's pretty sufficient to have a voice assistant based on a lot of user research that we are doing in that industry. So, and we have this combination of like human. that becomes self-servable. So this voice assistant can be embedded into any product and can onboard you like throughout any software, which I really love. This is one direction that I believe we should look at and implement and try out. And this is a new behavior that I think we will be introducing more and more instead of these annoying tool tips and checklists and pop-ups that are super outdated in my opinion. And a lot, and we already see like users are not engaging with them. are skipping them. They are tired of them. And finally, we have a good alternative, right? But there is another direction that I'm also super excited about. It's agentic experience, agentic AI, when the whole way of using SaaS and using complex software is changing. So let me explain what I mean. We could imagine a very boring type of software like, I don't know, CRM and or like invoicing or something like that. And we kind of as humans don't like these jobs, right? And sometimes it's very hard to find the feature, what we need to do there, like do a lot of manual clicks. And right now there are products that are introducing agentic AI on top of your existing product. What does it mean? Like you embed a chatbot inside your product. that you give commands to this chat and this chat is initiating agents inside the product. So one of the products that is doing that is called fault space. So for example, you're in a CRM and you need to find, I don't know, an opportunity or segment your leads. And you are not doing that like, okay, I will go to leads, I will do that, la la la. You say to this agent like, find me this leads, do that. And in front of you, it's happening, like, you know, an agent mode in Claude or chat.jpg, like the course, or you see what this thing is doing and you can control it, but you just give commands. And then all these automations are basically built on that. You can set up an automation, you can tell it what to do, and you can go away. And in that case, why we need onboarding? Why do we need to know? Jim Zarkadas (24:16) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kate Syuma (24:34) this complexity, this becomes the actual pattern of using any software. So I mean, we will need onboarding to that new way of doing things, but not the traditional onboarding that probably you can imagine or the audience can imagine. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (24:43) Hmm. Yeah. That's a very interesting one. And the last one, I haven't seen it. I mean, I'm using Clota and I've tried the Chrome extension, which I think pretty much what you're describing in terms of experience that you got, like you explain it, what you wanted to do, and then you see your browser as if somebody's using your mouse and your keyboard. That'll be, so that's what you described, right? Like with agent AI in this case. Kate Syuma (25:08) Yes, exactly. But in case of B2B companies or products, you cannot guarantee that there is a human being who is using Claude and they will do these commands. So they integrating with platforms like I mentioned, Foldspace, there is also another one called Assistant UI. So they are embedded inside your product and this is like a mini agent. Jim Zarkadas (25:19) Yeah, but it's building in the product. Yeah. Yep. Kate Syuma (25:37) but within your product already. So, because I think not so many people are still have adopted the behavior of like using cloud for agent, mode and charge GPT. There's still like a lot of people are not using AI at all. So for them, yeah, it's a different solution. Jim Zarkadas (25:45) Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't make sense to rely on an Excel tool also like for the onboarding. Yeah, 100%. That's an interesting one. I haven't seen it because I've only played with cloud on this. I haven't seen it in any SaaS product, but that's an interesting one that you actually for somebody like feeling confused or overwhelmed that they actually just lay around with the agent. It's like a customer success where they take over like your account. They usually sign in as you and then they start doing things and be like, Hey, don't be afraid. So for example, at Zenmade we have cleaning business owners and they're really Kate Syuma (26:16) Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (26:23) tech savvy people, right? So they're very, they used to be cleaners and now they're building a cleaning business. And these people are not familiar with software and tech in general. And it be an interesting experiment for these people because the, like the customer success, one of the things that they said that they do is essentially make people less afraid to click. That's how they describe it. And I was like, ⁓ that's an interesting one. Cause they, they're like, I'm not sure if I'm going to break anything. They, they have a way different mentality than we do where we take people and we just click around on products every, every Kate Syuma (26:25) Mmm. Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (26:53) So AI and agents could be a very interesting one for this audience actually. Yeah, I haven't seen this pattern, but it sounds pretty cool. I'm gonna research, do some research on that. Kate Syuma (26:58) Absolutely. Jim Zarkadas (27:03) And on activation also what you sort of like educating them how to use the product is like one of the areas and the other one that is also very, very interesting. And I feel like AI could help a lot there is also get them to the aha moment where like you sign up for a tool and you need like as a designers, we try to build momentum within the first, let's say three minutes of using that product, like get them to value, like to experience some value and hype them to keep going, to keep using the product and explore more. And I feel like. AI with personalization there can be very, very interesting. Right now with one of the teams, their help center software, so you create a knowledge base for your customer support team. We're thinking how could we leverage AI to essentially create a knowledge base for them the moment they sign up that is relevant to their goals. So instead of using a template, how can we draft content in that knowledge base that's exactly all the problems that they want to solve and the things that they want to document. We haven't come up with anything yet, but it's one of ideas we had I'm like that's a very interesting one with AI like the personalization part of it I feel can be very powerful as well. Kate Syuma (28:06) Yeah, and a lot of tools right now, I mean, third party tools are, can make the solution or add a solution to that. So you just need to integrate with them and give them all the data, documentation and all this stuff, and this will fly inside the product almost immediately. So it's another thing, sometimes when you're trying to find the solution internally, don't try to build everything internally. Jim Zarkadas (28:25) Mmm. Kate Syuma (28:31) It's too expensive to innovate in that field because there are so many now companies like I mentioned, Kobeby Core, Assistant UI, Foldspace. I have an article about all of these tools and another article will come out in February. We have a collaboration with Kyle Poir on that. So plenty of tools you can integrate with rather than building it yourself and spend like months on that. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (28:49) Nice. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. On this, now that you started sharing also some design patterns, one of the questions that I wanted to ask you is... If you have any projects that really stood out for you that are related to activation onboarding, and they stand out for you, let's say, maybe because you learned something unexpected, or you had a big win there in terms of the results, you already mentioned the video pop-ups in Miro, and that's a project that I would for sure love to dive into. But I'm wondering also if you have anything, like any other project comes to your mind that you would love to start and discuss. Kate Syuma (29:28) Yeah. So this mirror example was for sure one of the eye-openers and I shared it so many times on so many podcasts already. So we can attach the link to my whole case study about that. I have it. Another recent one I have is from Mobin. So Mobin actually, I don't know if you heard of the product, it's like the biggest UI UX library where you can find absolutely anything. I'm a huge fan of the product. Jim Zarkadas (29:37) Okay. Yeah, yeah, we're using mopping. Kate Syuma (29:56) And they actually attracted me to help them analyze their onboarding and activation journeys last year. And we had this onboarding and activation design sprint with them like for a couple of weeks when we were like zooming out and uncovering all the gaps and trying to find quick wins, big bets, meaningful shifts. And I also have a case about that that I will share. eventually it's interesting that the opportunities that they've taken into work. Jim Zarkadas (30:13) Hmm. Kate Syuma (30:25) and prioritized, scaled and leveraged not the activation only, but the expansion revenue by 20%. And you know, like, and if you didn't know, activation has a huge correlation with retention and with conversion to pay. And sometimes, like, we can find opportunities that can hit two goals, like, you know, inactivation goal and the revenue goal. And I think this is fantastic. Jim Zarkadas (30:41) Yeah. Kate Syuma (30:51) So to narrow down, there is one thing that they have implemented that was pretty cool. The feature, first of all, this product has a collaborative component or it has a multiplayer experience, meaning that it's not just B2C, you can use it with your team. And this is a leverage. So if your product is team-oriented, this is a huge, huge leverage for your activation ⁓ journeys. And there... Like a lot of teams actually don't do that, but there is one thing to do. It's domain match. So for example, you can imagine like you have a corporate domain. I have a corporate domain, growthmates.club. And imagine I would have a team. I have a mini team, but let's say we have a team and I registered in Mobin and then... there is another person who registered at Mobin and I didn't know about that. They didn't know I have an account. And we became like solo users, disconnected, not like, we don't have a shared workspace. So domain match is when, for example, another person with the same domain is registering in the product and you are immediately giving them the way to join your team. So they are not creating their own free account. They are joining your team. And then what is happening is very natural magic because Jim Zarkadas (31:58) yeah yeah yeah yeah Kate Syuma (32:06) they start working together, they start having a shared space, they create more content, they save more content, et cetera, et cetera. They expand the account basically, and this is how the revenue expansion is happening. And this is like just the thing that many companies forget about. They just don't know that it's possible to do the domain match basically. But we were doing that at Miro, Linear is doing that. mean, a lot of SaaS companies like Best in Class are doing that. So that was an an obvious activation experiment or activation solution. But another one that I like mentioning as a concept rather than a particular solution. Think about your value action, like your core value action. What is that in the product? How do you define your core value and what is your core value action? And if the experience around this core value action is broken, So imagining like, let's say we are working with Mobin, yeah, and they have this core experience, which is like saving flows, finding the right flow and reference, which is working pretty much all right. But then if we want to position this product for teams and the value for teams is like collaboration, and collaboration happens through comments, and comments are broken, let's say. We cannot deliver on that promise. We cannot activate that journey. So we shouldn't create onboarding per se. We should fix that core experience around the core value. And this is what we also uncovered with them, fixing the commenting experience, how to make it more discoverable, things like that. But they're still on the way of implementing that. But with some of previous clients, when we use the same mentality of uncovering the core value action and fixing the... Jim Zarkadas (33:31) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kate Syuma (33:50) Core experience around that we had achieved a 50 % increase in activation. It's also pretty obvious because if you fix the core issue and core experience, people just get to the value faster without necessarily extra tool tips. And I think the best onboarding, as I mentioned, is when you don't need these tool tips, when your product just flies. Jim Zarkadas (34:11) Mmm, yeah. Kate Syuma (34:12) when you have the most intuitive user experience, when, for example, Notion is onboarding to the product by the product itself, like, here is a checklist, figure it out. And you can figure it out because it's pretty intuitive. Jim Zarkadas (34:20) Yeah, exactly. Mm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, I'm thinking which one to comment on. You mentioned a lot of interesting ideas here as well. And it's very interesting also what you're saying is that the best onboarding is the one that is not needed, essentially. the product is actually intuitive. It reminds me like the code from like users, like the best error message is the one that is never presented. That people need to see. On the unboding though, like... Kate Syuma (34:50) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (34:54) something that I've realized and I'm curious about your take on this. So now with some of our, of the teams that we designed for, we're working, we're fully focused on activation for this quarter. And the Help Center software knowledge is one of them. And we realized that, for example, when it comes to a knowledge base, so it could be a public knowledge base, a help center for your customers, or it could be an internal one, like a team training knowledge base. you sign up and then you have to essentially start creating articles and then to go and preview the knowledge base and see the end thing. Kate Syuma (35:22) Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (35:25) what we've realized that actually the product works well, it's intuitive, but to get to the point where you can see the thing that you're looking for, which is a beautiful knowledge base that is intuitive, that has a great search, it has an age output that works as you expect, a search function that works as you expect, there is friction throughout this journey. And now the idea we're working on is what if the first three minutes, or let's say the first five, six steps, are about creating a proof of concept for them, so they Kate Syuma (35:33) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (35:54) just give us the basic information, maybe we use some AI in that process and we'll create a knowledge base with relevant content for them and through the link of their website we go and fit some brand details and brand the knowledge base and then we get them something that is 80 % there, that's why we call it a proof of concept, just to build momentum and make them feel, oh this is what I need, like now I want to go and start tweaking, create more content and so on and we have this assumption that this is the aha moment from what we've seen in sales because that has been a tricky part for me as a designer personally. Kate Syuma (36:10) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (36:24) from my experience is the how moment is a concept that everybody's talking about. I'm like, do people really know how to define a how moment? I found this a very hard skill to develop. Now I feel I'm getting it and also realize that it needs experimentation and you need to combine sales goals and customer success goals with product data to understand where do people really experience it and could be also multiple how moments. But yeah, that's kind of some. Kate Syuma (36:39) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jim Zarkadas (36:50) Some thoughts on this? Yeah, 100%. Kate Syuma (36:50) I love the case. If you want, we can briefly talk about this. So first of all, what you described makes total sense, like the solution direction. What is the aha moment? Simplest definition is like the first time your user is experiencing the core value, right? And then again, same question. What is your core value? And this is where a lot of companies get stuck. You said we can have many aha moments. We cannot have 20 aha moment definitions for the same product. Jim Zarkadas (37:05) Mmm. Mmm. Kate Syuma (37:17) Actually, we should have one unless you have multi-products offering where you sell absolutely different things. So, and then for example, in Slack, it would be my first time of exchanging the message with my colleague. This is my mini, like my moment. Like I use the product for the core value. It's not something always like delightful and confetti type of stuff. It's like really simple. And when it comes to... Jim Zarkadas (37:22) Yeah, Yeah. Kate Syuma (37:46) time to value another thing you talked about and how to speed up this time to value. So I have now a bit of bold concept that I'm pushing in my content is like your first value, at least the mini aha moment should be reached in 60 seconds, in under 60 seconds. Yeah. So with AI... Jim Zarkadas (38:03) 60 seconds, okay, I said five, 10 minutes, but yeah, okay, 60 seconds is your take. Kate Syuma (38:08) And I don't expect this to be a real, real aha moment. I describe it as a mini aha moment when qualitatively or from the behavioral user perspective, this is the first aha that motivates them to do the real complex job. So in that case, we can do plenty of things with AI. can on the background analyze their website. We can, as Gamma is doing, ask them some questions, get input. and then design the first content for them. It's not going to be a real aha moment because it's not a real content that they're going to use and share and, you know, consume. But it's a preparation for that real aha moment that motivates them to do a more complex stuff. And to do the more complex stuff, we can onboard them through this, if it's a really complex product, through AI voice assistant to do that properly. Because learn by doing is very important. And investment loops are very important. We talked yesterday on my course about that challenge that one company, AI company wanted to actually create such a quick shortcut to value, like user shouldn't do absolutely anything. Like give me the prompt, this is the outcome, that's it. And I said, it's not gonna work because users still need to invest and we shouldn't cover the enough level of that investment. because we value things more if we invest into them, like this IKEA effect and all of that things. But investment loop is like when you start doing something, you give an information, you give a prompt, you give more data, and this is only way to build stickiness to the product. So we shouldn't forget about that either. Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (39:49) Yeah. Yeah, I fully agree on everything and on how you described the whole idea with the mini aha moments as well. there are two verbs that stand out that came to my mind as you were describing. Essentially, your role as a product maker, like during onboarding, is to facilitate and motivate, right? So facilitate, make it easier, like the AI agents you mentioned and all these ideas on how can you guide them to take the action. And the motivate is actually the aha moments, like not sell them because sell them, sometimes people misunderstand. they think that they need to push. It's more like motivate them, show them the value, and build an incremental path to get there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a topic that we could easily spend another hour discussing, but yeah. We have five more minutes, so I was thinking to... Kate Syuma (40:29) Yeah. Jim Zarkadas (40:32) to go into my last question, which is I'm really curious to hear from you, which is, what is a SaaS product or an app, so it could be a mobile app as well, or an app on your MacBook, let's say, that you really love, and why do you love it? What makes it so special for you? Kate Syuma (40:48) Yeah, so many apps and products. I will mention two. So one is the desktop product, it's Granola. I'm using it all the time to analyze the calls. I think it's running right now in the background as well, because you never know what conversation will be turned into what. Jim Zarkadas (41:04) Okay. Kate Syuma (41:08) And especially for me as a content creator, I really love turning conversations into my content. I even realized that the best content that I'm creating is created after I spoke about that. So I sometimes even use voice notes and then I turn them into my written content. So it really works like that. I don't know, like it's my nature. And granola is beautiful. I think it's for AI note taking on video calls. Like it's just absolutely beautiful, intuitive, I love it. yeah, just adore the product. And the last or the next one, yeah, I was thinking like with the mobile app, and you know, probably it's selfish, but can I mention the app that I'm building actually with my husband? Because there are so many apps out there. Jim Zarkadas (41:55) Oh, okay. I'm interested. I didn't know you were working on something. Kate Syuma (42:00) Like, you know, I could say like, okay, Spotify, I like it, but everybody likes it, so who cares? And there is an app actually that we are building and to provide a bit of context, as a human, I'm very curious in psychology and I'm curious in the particular type of human psychology, which is called ⁓ Jungian, Jungian psychology. And the... Jim Zarkadas (42:20) Mm-hmm. Kate Syuma (42:23) root concept of that is that you need to have access to your subconscious all the time in order to understand where to go, what to do, how to grow and stuff like that. And the easiest access to your subconscious is your dreams, basically. So what are you dreaming at night? And we built an app with my husband, which is called Dream Notes, which is also a YI-driven type of app. where you can put your dreams and it will analyze your dreams through the Jungian psychology analysis. So it's not like, let's say, I don't know, astronomy or some weird stuff. It's like a very scientific type of method. And then it will give you some patterns and it will ask you some questions to dive deeper into that analysis. And you bring these Jim Zarkadas (42:56) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kate Syuma (43:08) like these insights into your conversations with the Jungian psychologist. If you are working in that method, probably you know that. So it's not replacing the real psychologist, but it's more like guiding you through that process. And this is the app that I'm using every time I wake up, basically. So I'm waking up and I'm recording my dream, and then it unpacked so many things in my life, how I will spend the day, how I will, I don't know, how I will behave. Of course, I'm not at the point of recording every single dream, but when I do that, it gives me so much insights that really, really helps me to live through the day, let's say. Jim Zarkadas (43:47) That's very interesting. Is it live? Can people download it? Kate Syuma (43:49) Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will give you the link. It's called Dream Notes. It's like also this purple, purple theme like I have everywhere. ⁓ Jim Zarkadas (43:57) is the theme of the app as well. ⁓ Kate Syuma (43:59) Yeah, yeah, so it's inside the app the same color. I will send it to you here, but then of course I will send you all the links somehow as well. Here it is. Jim Zarkadas (44:03) Nice. Yeah, yeah. that's cool. Yeah, I'm gonna find out, worries. Yeah, that's cool. I'm gonna download it and try it out for sure as well. It's very, very interesting. With Granola, I'm curious, just a very quick question. What makes it different from Fathom, for example? I've heard people talking about it, but I haven't fully understood what is the basic difference with the other ones. Other than that it's not joining the wedding, like the call, so you don't have this weird note taker being the third person, the call. Kate Syuma (44:35) Yeah, exactly. So this is one thing that differentiates it because I really get annoyed by all of these AI, like note takers on the call, but also the UX. I really love how simple it is like inside. Like it's a Mac app basically, or I believe they also have Windows version. Jim Zarkadas (44:42) Yeah. Kate Syuma (44:58) It's just like a node because a lot of people with Mac OS, they have this pattern of behavior with nodes. I have thousands of nodes inside my Macbook. And it's so familiar to us to use that UI. So this is why they turn this note taking into nodes. Jim Zarkadas (45:13) I see, I see. Kate Syuma (45:18) that you can take notes there that will be analyzed and kind of complemented with the transcript and it will be very smart summary as an output. So I really love that idea. So that's the reason why I'm using it. Give it a try. Yeah, by the way, I don't know. I don't know if they are based in the Netherlands. They are based, I think in the UK, but I heard maybe they have some in... Yeah, yeah, they are European company. I think they had some investors from... Jim Zarkadas (45:37) Okay, so they're not US ⁓ Kate Syuma (45:44) from Netherlands. yeah, I keep an eye on them. Yeah, yes, yeah. Jim Zarkadas (45:46) that's cool. Has some local vibes. Nice. super. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to give it a try. It's very, the way that you describe it now makes it more interesting for me to try it out. Thank you. Cool. So yeah, these were all of my questions. Thanks a lot for, for joining. Honestly, I would love if we could plan like a call like for the future, like, ⁓ in the next month where we could do just a dive in into like design practices and brainstorm about like ideas. I feel it's like super interesting. Yeah, exactly. Kate Syuma (46:08) So many things to talk about. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me and appreciate that and hope it was valuable for people who are listening to us today. Jim Zarkadas (46:19) Any time. Yeah, yeah, any time, any time.