Mato: Turning Personalized Demos Into Onboarding

Miles: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Year One. Good to have you here. Grant: Yeah, glad you're hanging out with us again. This one's going to be fun. Miles: So today we're staring straight at that scary moment where you ask users to try a product they've literally never seen before. Grant: Right. You've got no habits to lean on, no muscle memory, and the clock is ticking before they bounce. Miles: We're going to talk about why that first two minutes of onboarding feels like a high pressure sales pitch and a... And to trust fall at the same time. Grant: And how urgency works there, like how hard can you push without making people feel trapped or, you know, tricked? Miles: Yeah, plus how much you should explain upfront versus letting people discover things on their own so it doesn't turn into a 17 screen tutorial. Grant: I've definitely built a 17 screen version. That deal taught me a lesson I won't forget. Miles: Same. So we brought in someone who's lived. lived this over and over. Product and UX expert Alexander Benz. Grant: He's got stories about first onboarding flows that flopped, the ones that quietly printed retention, and why your helpful guidance might be killing curiosity. Miles: So let's set the stage and then hand it to Alexander. Hi, Alexander. It's good to have you back. This time we are getting into onboarding users into a product they've never seen before. How have you been? Alexander Benz: I've been doing great. I'm excited to get into the topic today and talk a bit more about Mato and what we're doing here together with you today. Miles: That's awesome. So before we dig in, I'm curious, what made onboarding feel like such an urgent thing to focus on right now? Was there a specific moment with Mato where you realized this was the real problem? Alexander Benz: Well, I think since we are a completely new product category and that we are doing something that no one else is doing in industry and it's also a complex setup, it's definitely something that I wanted to focus on to make sure that we do the right way and also optimizing our sales process and making sure that that is done in a way where the consumer also feels like they're actually understanding what they're supposed to do so it's an important thing for me in that way but I also my background is in UX design and customer experience so it's also definitely something that's close to my heart in terms of building great user experience too. Miles: That makes total sense. You've spent years helping e-commerce companies guide people toward a checkout button they already understood. But with Mato, there's no existing mental model for what people are even looking at when they first land on it. Take me back to the very first onboarding flow you shipped. What did that actually look like and where did it go wrong? Alexander Benz: Well, I think one of the things that I find difficult sometimes is that I am so excited about the product that I might be overcomplicating certain things or overexplaining certain things. But I noticed that as soon as I get them to listen to the audio and then when they also experience the actual interview, like the one we are having right now. Right now, that's when it really clicks for the end consumer. So I can talk about all these nice things and it looks good and all these things. But if they don't hear it, they're not going to get it either. And I think also building out a way for them to understand how they can apply the podcasting to their business, for example, was also a crucial moment in the onboarding and really understanding and helping customers. So also having guided onboarding. having notches and things to show them along the way how to use the tool but also maybe showing them milestones and achievements so we track for example podcast performance and different milestones and we send them emails and messages and make sure that they also see that their podcast is performing well or that the content of their podcast is actually doing a difference for or their business or for their audience. Miles: That's the key insight right there. They need to hear it, not read about it. The audio is doing the work that no explanation can. Walk me through a specific moment when a user hit that wall before you figured that out. What did you actually see happen? Alexander Benz: So I had a lead early on go quite cold and they weren't really responding and it took several weeks to actually get them to listen to the audio and experience. experience it but as soon as they saw an episode that I put together a demo that's when they came back and booked another call and that was when I then decided I definitely need to make like a demo platform so what I do now for every sales call is I create a demo show based on their website with a jingle and cover so that they get the feeling for like a real show and then we have a demo page that shows them their podcasts and their episode they can join an interview directly from there we show them a podcast strategy outline so it gives them a full kind of sales sheet but that's tailored specifically to them so that they feel like it's personal and they get they understand it in their industry and in their business how it actually applies to what they're doing Miles: No way. So you're not just showing them a generic demo, you're building their actual show before they even commit. That's wild. How much time does it take you to spin up one of those personalized demos? And at what point in the sales cycle do you actually do that? Alexander Benz: Yeah, so One of the things that I focus a lot on with Mado and also with my other previous businesses is definitely automation. I use AI for everything. So I've set it up to be mostly automatic. The only thing I need to do is go into our platform, I need to put in their websites and then create a show where I decide just the title and who is going to be their host and everything. And I have also with Nano Banana, I create the covers and we create you create jingles with AI and then when that's ready I can just put the URL into HubSpot and I will just click create demo page and then in the background an automation runs and it creates the whole strategy it creates the whole page for me based on a template so it runs a full cloud code agent on our server in the background to create a full page so then it takes me like five to ten minutes and then I I have a full URL that I can send to them. Just take the transcript down from the call, ask Cloud to write the email to them, put in the URLs and then hit out the door. Miles: Five to ten minutes. That's incredible. You've basically turned the entire sales demo into a product experience itself. So when they land on that personalized page, what's the first thing you're trying to get them to do? Are you pushing them straight into listening or is there a sequence? Alexander Benz: Yes, definitely. So there is a huge or big hero section where they see the cover of the podcast, they see all the offers episode is ready with a big play button, they play the episode, listen to it. When they go down, they see the strategy. Along the way, there is also floating elements to do their own interview on the podcast. The podcast and then Miles: Later on the page it gets into pricing and strategy and also when our next follow-up call is because in the first call I make sure to always book their second or the follow-up call so that I know that they're going to show up after I created a full show for them. Grant: Smart, you're locking in the next conversation before they even experience the product, so by the time they show up to that second call, they've heard the audio, they've seen themselves in it, and they already know what it does. What's different about how that second call goes compared to the first one? Miles: Well, I think that's when I feel like they are fully primed and ready to go because they already heard how it can be. And that's also when I typically share my screen to do some screen. screen sharing to show them how the system works in the back end typically give them also access to a demo account so they can go in and also play around with itself and and look at it but that's when they i feel like they really get it and they are already sold on the idea of it the remaining is just how do they actually apply this how do they use the system how do they log in how does it look like in terms of episode topics and how do they do the limitations so it's So it's more than kind of in the details of things that's how they actually apply it. So that's the good thing that they go into this meeting with a mindset that they are already using this because I already created a show for them with an episode and content that they like. Grant: So the second call is almost like they're already a customer. You're just showing them the controls. That's a huge shift from the first call. When you hand them that demo account and they start poking around on their own, what's the thing they typically get stuck on or ask about first? Miles: Well, that's what I am in the meeting. I'm trying to show them kind of the basic ropes around things like how do you then generate your own episode? How do you... you input a prompt how do you approve a script so typically I will be able to walk through in that call with all the things that they need but of course when we generate a show for them it's based on only one call they have with them and there might be things that they want to change in the system so for example I had another one the other week that wanted maybe more of an kind of edgier talk or like they wanted it to be more kind of or not fear mongering but kind of more kind of grabbing attention from people while we had put into the show prompt that it should be not sensationalizing numbers so it shouldn't overdo numbers so it was kind of like a mismatch between what they actually wanted and what was in our prompt for the show so maybe like some small things like that they people want one changed but it's just then when we get into having them signed and we actually work together with them to create the actual soul together and that we get a lot of the feedback. Grant: Right. So the real onboarding doesn't actually happen until they're live in the system trying to build their own thing. That's when the gaps show up. When you're working with them to create that first real show together, what's the biggest difference between what they thought they wanted and what actually works? Ah, yeah. Miles: So that's a good question. We also do a lot of podcast promotion and oftentimes we know kind of what works, we need a certain volume of episodes, we always recommend to bring guests on the show. people maybe want the podcast to be very promotional or they want to talk a lot about their own product which I think doesn't work as well because people will not tune in every week to listen to you just selling every week. It needs to be a content piece that people find interesting that they want to listen to and I always recommend also that you bring on guests that also can use their social media and presence to also promote the show. on their own channels to also get that kind of viral effect with it and that people also promote your show so i would definitely say that people sometimes view it more as a promotional channel which it is technically but you have to build an audience that is interested in a topic that is adjacent to your business so it needs to be something where they want to tune in and actually listen to the podcast and not And I'll just hear an ad for your company. Grant: So you're teaching them podcast strategy before they even know how to use the tool. That's the real onboarding. Here's what I'm curious about. When someone comes in thinking, I'm going to use this to sell, and you tell them that won't work, how do you actually get them to believe you? What's the moment where that clicks for them? Miles: Yes, that's a good question because I think we've done now a lot of MVPs, we've done a lot of trials, we run 30 different shows ourselves and we also have very successful clients. One of our shows has 40,000 listeners a month. One of our other clients went from zero to 5,000 listeners in the first week. So we do have the experience and I typically pull on those shows to show statistics and show that, hey, this is what's working for them because they are applying the strategy that we are recommending for them. So I think definitely showing with proof is the way to do it. Grant: You're using your own shows as the proof that smart they can see the data hear the episodes themselves So when you're running 30 shows internally are those all for Mato or are you testing different formats and strategies on purpose? Miles: So we have a bunch of shows that are for Mato that are focusing on everything from celebrity gossip to, for example, this startup podcast we are currently interviewing on. to also like the moon landing for example or sports but we also do run other shows that we are using as promotion for other clients that we're working with so for example a company that sells let's say maybe like kitchen appliances just as an example maybe an interior design show could be a platform where they can build a show that is not directly affiliated with their company but I can have sponsorships and reads and ties into their actual main business so we do also run a couple of those shows where it's a different topic but we are building it to promote one of the other podcasts or other businesses that we are working with Grant: So you're basically running a live lab for every possible use case your customers might want to try. That's your proof engine right there. Before we wrap, I want to ask you this. You've spent your whole career teaching people how to guide someone towards something they already understand. Now you're building onboarding for something that didn't exist before. What's the one thing you've learned about human behavior in this shift? shift that surprised you the most. Miles: Well, I think that's an interesting question. Of course, in the network, e-commerce products are, of course, a lot cheaper, so they're also more impulse buys, but I've also run my agency. for several years now and it's been very successful. We've done $150 million in client revenue. And I think that's where I lean a lot more on my sales experience and my user experience from handling enterprise clients. But I think the shift is definitely that it needs to be tailored. It can't just be generic. It needs to be an understanding of who they are as a client. So I spent a lot of time researching before my meetings, making sure I understand what they've done in the past. Maybe they've had a podcast before that died out because they didn't have the time to do a podcast. So there's all these different things that I can kind of pull on that makes them want to... engage with me and be interested. And then of course there's a lot of content around it. So we're building our content engines with blog posts and we're doing social media, we are doing ads and outreach. So a lot of the same components play into this, but also of course sales cycles are also a lot longer here since the buy-in is a lot bigger. Grant: Alexander, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and walking through how you're actually thinking about this. The way you've turned the demo itself into the product experience, that's something a lot of founders are going to want to steal from you. That was such a great conversation. Alexander Benz: I know. I loved what Alexander Benz said about onboarding users into a product they've never seen before. Grant: Definitely some valuable insights there. The way he discussed demo automation really stood out to me. It's fascinating how personalization can make such a difference. Alexander Benz: Absolutely. And how he pointed out the time saved by automating demos. For businesses, especially with startup resources, that's a game changer. Grant: And I appreciated his example of a cold lead hitting a wall. It was so relatable. Have you ever had a client just completely stop because something wasn't clicking? Alexander Benz: Oh, many times. What hit me was how Alexander turned that roadblock into a learning experience rather than a setback. Grant: Exactly. And transitioning a mindset from I'm going to sell to I'm going to build trust was such a nuanced point. Earning trust, as Alexander mentioned, seems pivotal. Alexander Benz: It's true that switch from sales-led to trust-led onboarding is broader than just tech products. It's a principle you can bring into any business strategy. Grant: And his insights on user friction during the first interaction with a demo account were insightful. I've seen those moments where a potential customer loses interest because they feel overwhelmed. Alexander Benz: Yes, Alexander's strategy for reducing that friction so users feel guided rather than lost is brilliant. It's a reminder of how crucial user experience is. Grant: Guiding them to those crucial first milestones, just like he does with e-commerce flows, is something we can all apply. Alexander Benz: Right, those principles translate well into any sector. The emotional side of users' first interactions shouldn't be overlooked. LOOKED Grant: Well, that wraps up our thoughts, doesn't it? Alexander Benz: DEFINITELY. LET'S ROLL INTO WHAT'S COMING UP NEXT. Speaker 4: All right, we'll land it there. I keep coming back to that first onboarding flow story where speeding things up actually meant saying less and listening more. Alexander Benz: Yeah, that whole don't over explain a new product category, earn trust with one clear win bit that sticks. Speaker 4: So one-line takeaway, if your product's new, your onboarding has to work like a good demo, specific, fast, and tailored to the person in front of you. Alexander Benz: Totally. And if you know a YC founder in year one who's living that reality, send them our way. yearone at heymeadow.com. Speaker 4: Also, if this helped you see those early onboarding and sales moments differently, hit subscribe and drop a quick review. It actually helps other founders find the show. Alexander Benz: And send this episode to the friend who's rewriting their onboarding flow for the fifth time. You know who they are. Speaker 4: Thanks for hanging out with us. Alexander Benz: We'll see you next time. I'm on year one.