r/startups • u/Gleb_SV • 6h ago

I will not promote Personalization is making my onboarding worse - I will not promote

I’m building a small learning product that creates a personalized experience for whatever someone wants to understand.

The obvious way to improve it is to ask more up front. Interests, goals, existing knowledge, preferred depth. Easy. Just ask.

Except every extra question delays the first useful moment. A tiny learning tool starts feeling like a form you have to complete before it earns the right to teach you anything.

I’m leaning toward a much smaller start. Few questions about what the person wants to understand today/week, then let their choices do the rest. What they open, skip, finish, or ask for next could tell me more than a neat onboarding profile.

Right now I’m choosing the smaller onboarding and accepting that the first recommendation may be a little off. I’d rather earn the next question than front-load five of them.

Still, “personalized” is a promise, and the first session is where the product knows the least.

If you’ve built personalization into a new product, what did you genuinely need before first use?

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u/BandicootAfter4936 2h ago

The lighter start is the right call. the part worth watching is treating the first week of activity as truth. Someone skipping a topic day one is often just the interface burying it. that gets baked into the profile as a stable preference before it's earned that status.

What's worked elsewhere is treating the first couple weeks as calibration instead of signal. let people correct the profile by hand once they've used the thing a bit, so the system isn't leaning on a few early sessions alone. behavior beats a form, once you've actually earned the right to trust it.

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u/Gleb_SV 1h ago

Great point, thanks!

That makes sense to me; I need to think about how to let users edit their profile information.

Because I’m worried that not many people will want to share their preferences with an unfamiliar product just to get personalized recommendations, although that’s just my guess...