Keep Onboard

Dashboards are for losers, CRMs are relics of old, let’s hit onboarding, retention and churn prevention targets, and do that while the iron's hot! 🔥

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

Churn prevention is one of the biggest challenges we're trying to solve, and it starts early, before onboarding.

Bring the right type of clients in, and your churn will normalize.

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

What's your churn rate?
Here are the benchmarks of what is okay in your vertical:

🔸B2B/Enterprise SaaS: 1% or less monthly.
🔸SMB SaaS: 3% to 5% monthly.
🔸B2C SaaS/Apps: 3% to 7% monthly.
🔸Media & Entertainment: 5% to 8% monthly.
🔸Subscription E-commerce: 5% to 10% monthly.
🔸Financial Services & IT Services: 1% to 2% monthly.
🔸Services & Telecom: 2% to 3% monthly.

What's yours?

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

If you'll follow us, you'll see how we're building this brand from the ground up.

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Why are you building in public?

@melissapekel and I are not building @keeponboard in public because we think this is how we'll get clients...

Don't get me wrong, you guys are amazing, but most of you are probably not our ICP.

We spent many years in marketing, doing everything that tests a product against the realities of usage and interaction on the web.

Clients, employers, partners, whomever we worked with, always wanted us to:

Target the ICP!!!
And focus on intent!!!

For them, it was the one thing that showed attribution (and that we were doing our job).

But a name?
A brand?
Positive sentiment?
The actual things that make people really pay attention?

None of these are built solely around an ICP.
You need to cast a wider net.

You have to invest in Awareness.

Take, for example, Salesforce.

Compared to all-time users of the product, they have:

- x100 more people who hate the name.
- x100 more people who want to try them.

And all of that w/o never ever using it once.
That's the power of a name.

If there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's that talking about what you're building creates a mental image in people’s minds.

- People talk about it 1:1.
- Curiosity via proxy exposes it to their networks.
- And now LLMs are jumping in on all of that, establishing you as a leader based on someone's opinion.

That's why we’re doing this.

We're building a brand.

If you're reading this down here, you’re a friend on this journey. 🩷

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

I'm becoming a thing...

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Day 9/7 of finishing the @keeponboard MVP until EOW.

2nd day in overtime.
@melissapekel and I felt that Claude didn't make sense 70% of the time today.
But we still won today, and it was a good day.

- MCP is ready.
- Onboarding funnel is ready with sequences being generated per onboarding use case.
- Per lifetime stage gents are talking with each other, performing handoffs like champs.
- Demo data renders and is processed like a dream, generating insights we didn't expect.

Of course, I might be Claude/code blind at this point, but progress nevertheless.

We'll see tomorrow.
MVP is almost ready.

Gn brave builders

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

Founders/Builders/Startup people.

Did any of you built a waiting list for their app/saas/agentic platform?

Would love to hear how it went and if you learned something from it.

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

You shouldn't work with customers who are not willing to commit, and you sure as hell don't need to work with someone who doesn't see your value.

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

I worked in the service industry for years, running a marketing and product agency with @melissapekel.

And if there's one thing I learned, is that:

Suffering looks like this...

Customers at $499 per month: "My life is in your hands," and "I can't pay this month, can I have a discount?" always on, 24x7, with 50 messages per day!
Build for those:

And success looks like this...

Customers paying you $50,001: "Hi cool, send the invoice to accounting" once per month.

Build to close the big ones!

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

It's basic Rock 'n' roll!

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

A new day rises over my founder friends, the builders who grind, and the startup fam on @X!

From time to time, we all need this reminder...

📏 Every time you're looking for that shortcut.
🪚 Every time you're looking to cut corners.
🌩️ Every time you think that "this is not working", and "maybe we can growth hack this."

You have to understand!
There is no way but the hard way, so get used to it.

Embrace it, and Rock 'n' roll.
It's glorious.

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

It's trademarked...

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Day 8/7 of finishing the @keeponboard MVP until EOW.
We're officially in overtime.

Going to sleep? Overrated.
Not being able to fall asleep? So last week's problem.
All that matters now is to finish the MVP.

Missing deadlines won't kill you but it sucks. And the grind? Its pushing us towards our goal.

Gn legends!

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

We have a mathematical equation that @markpekel and I developed at @keeponboard.

Grinding leads to = grit.
Grit leads to = more grinding.
Therefore:
Grinding leads to = more grinding.

No pain, no pain 💪
2 week of grinding to get the MVP out, which us luck!

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

+70 followers in 24 hours, and I'm almost at 100!

Just started posting again yesterday :)

How far can this thing go?📈

Founders, builders, SaaS people, Devs, and Email Marketers, I'm building @keeponboard.

What are you building?
Let's connect! ⤵️

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

Who's building in SaaS right now?
What's your take?

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Founders/Builders/Startup people of @X.

The next SaaS product frontier is the one that saves you from that founder-product-time drain, not including infra.

If you're in business and it's < $20K - $40K in terms of opportunity cost, buy it.

Make a note of that. Build for that.

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

@dadumeta That's an excellent niche my friend, you're going places! Just followed :)

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

@eliottbaylot Someone needs to lead that, we'll be following! welcome on board :)

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

Are you joining us this week?

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

Good morning :)
Or is it a good morning to rock on?

In any case, I can already feel that this week is going to be great.

@keeponboard is making jumps, not strides, and although we didn't hit our 7/7 goal (we're on day 8 of the 7 in our MVP finalization count, a bit late), our agentic onboarding and retention platform is taking shape the way we always wanted, which is sweet!

It's rock 'n' roll time!

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

She has a point!

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

Funny how big tech took from founders and builders, basically everyone, the ability to distribute via owned channels.

Everything is now zero-click: websites, socials.
Come to us, we're validation, here's $50 for your efforts!

Except for Emails, the last bastion of owned. And even with emails, I saw companies who used to send +1B's of emails per month, losing ground to ISPs cracking down on them.

Still, atm, it's the most owned channel.
Agree?

[Melissa Pekel @melissapekel]

Wow, just re-landed on @X, and already
+20 new followers. The platform really changed!

But where is the girl power?

Girls who are in startups, girl founders, girl builders, let's connect!

[Keep Onboard @keeponboard]

Let's all join on this one!

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Hey @X👋 hope you're enjoying your weekend!
This one is very special to me...

I want you to meet @melissapekel, my partner in everything and a co-founder @keeponboard!

She's returning to X, and looking to #connect with:

🧙 Founder friends.
🌟 Startup builders.
🤺 The people on X who build in public.
🤩 Indie hackers.
💡Champs figuring out big problems
🚀Shipping side projects.

Drop ⬇️a "Hi and let's all connect🙋‍♂️

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Day 6/7 of finishing the MVP until EOW.

Tomorrow is the last day, I dunno how much I'll be here, the @X algo will forgive me?

We are all hostages :)

Every decision I took up until this point is a risk, validated only by my experience, research and people telling me that it sounds great and solves real problems, even when I go into details.

This of course is a bucket that can't hold water.

That's why the MVP needs to go out.

Not going to sleep yet, I want to spend some time with my family.
Gn

[Mark Pekel 🇸🇪 @markpekel]

Day 5/7 of finishing the MVP until EOW.

Going to sleep now, what a day it has been.
Lots of progress on the product and even on distribution (passed today 3K followers).

I am compounding.
Gn