Usable with a quick edit9 of 11 checks passed
The review is clear, evidence-based, and covers all required points; a PM could act on it with only minor wording tweaks.
Output
Onboarding review: activate on financial value, not setup
Recommendation: Replace checklist completion as our activation metric with connecting a bank and categorising at least 10 transactions within seven days of signup. Reorient onboarding around that outcome. The celebration screen and progress bar are secondary; making the current checklist more engaging risks improving the wrong metric.
What activation should mean
For Tidepool, activation should mean a user has taken the first meaningful steps toward understanding their spending—not finished configuring the app.
Bank connection brings their financial data into Tidepool; categorisation makes that data useful. Together, these are our strongest available proxy for experiencing core value. This is a working definition, not proof that exactly 10 categorisations creates a lasting habit. We should validate the threshold and whether users actually understand something useful about their money.
Budget creation can follow that first insight. The evidence does not support making it a mandatory activation requirement today.
What the evidence says
Among August’s 4,000 signups, overall day-60 retention was 28%.
| First-week behaviour | Users | Day-60 retention |
|---|---|---|
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Completed setup checklist | 2,438 | 30.4% |
| Connected a bank | 2,000 | 48.2% |
| Categorised 10+ transactions | 1,380 | 64.6% |
| Connected a bank and categorised 10+ | 1,080 | 78.0% |
| Created a budget | 1,230 | 33.3% |
| Opened the app on 4+ days | 2,180 | 39.9% |
The checklist has weak separation: completers retained at 30.4%, versus 24.2% for non-completers. Its 61% completion rate is therefore a poor headline measure of delivered value.
By contrast, only 27% of signups connected a bank and categorised 10+ transactions, but they accounted for 842 of 1,120 retained users—75% of everyone retained. Users who did not achieve both retained at 9.5%.
These are observational associations. More motivated users may both complete these actions and remain active; we cannot promise 78% retention simply by pushing people through them. Behaviour groups also overlap, so the reported steps should not be treated as a strictly sequential funnel. Before testing, reconcile the rounded onboarding figures with event counts and standardise the day-60 activity definition.
What to change
- Remove configuration as a gate to value. Defer theme selection and account naming; make savings goals optional. Request notification permission when there is a clear benefit, such as a relevant budget alert—not as checklist work.
- Bring bank connection forward. Explain why access is needed, what data is used, and how users retain control. Instrument connection starts, provider errors, unsupported banks, abandonment and successful imports. Preserve a skip/retry path rather than forcing consent.
- Guide users from imported transactions to spending insight. Offer a short, low-effort review of suggested categories. Let users confirm or correct them, then show an understandable spending summary. Do not require ten arbitrary manual edits merely to satisfy the metric.
- Offer a budget as the next useful action. Use the spending summary to suggest a realistic starting budget, rather than asking users to invent one before seeing their finances.
Test the redesigned flow against today’s onboarding. Measure seven-day activation first, then downstream retention; monitor connection failures, abandonment and user-reported trust and usefulness.
Design proposal and next quarter’s goal
A progress bar is worth testing if it tracks meaningful steps toward understanding spending. It should not encourage completion of low-value setup tasks. A celebration screen belongs after a genuine milestone and should reinforce the insight gained, not interrupt access to it. Neither should take priority over bank-connection and categorisation friction.
Replace the 61% → 75% checklist goal with a goal for the new activation definition. I propose 27% → 35% within seven days, provisionally, subject to instrumentation validation and early experiment results. That is a planning target—not a forecast supported by this dataset.
Keep checklist completion as a diagnostic. Judge success by increased meaningful activation without sacrificing trust or retention, and confirm the retention effect once next quarter’s cohorts mature.
Grades and run details
Decision model 82 · LLM judge 100
Decision model checks
- failUses the supplied evidence correctly90%
- passAddresses the actual decision86%
- passRespects explicit constraints30%
- passIdentifies material uncertainty83%
- passAvoids unsupported claims43%
- passProduces the required deliverable42%
- passComputes retention by behaviour32%
- passTests before trusting the correlation97%
- passActivation defined by what predicts retention99%
- failGets the base of every number right82%
- passGets people to value sooner78%
Run
- Run
- #1
- Time to output
- 30 s
- Submitted
- 5 Oct 2026