| Platform | Early asks | First priority | Likely dropoff friction (estimates) |
| Instagram (social) | Contacts access, find friends | Getting you connected (suggest friends, feed) so you see content immediately | Asking for contacts is a strong friction point. Let’s say 30-40 % of users deny or skip this. |
| Notion (productivity / SaaS) | Use-case questions, templates, minimal profile | Let you dive in creating a page quickly (value: training you on usage, establishing user habits early) | Users may drop off during template setup due to higher activation energy. Say 20-30 %. |
| Venmo (payments) | Phone verification, then later bank and identity verification | Let you send/receive limited funds first (but full value needs verification) | Bank linking / micro-deposits are heavy friction, but absolutely necessary to use Venmo. If users have downloaded the app, they have a specific need for payments, so they are unlikely to abandon here. Say 10%. |
Instagram, Notion, and Venmo reveal three philosophies of onboarding tied to their core value loops.
Instagram prioritizes social graph formation: it immediately asks for contacts to populate your feed, betting that early social validation drives retention. Its friction (contacts access) costs some privacy-sensitive users, but delivers instant gratification through content and connection.
Notion minimizes friction and maximizes autonomy: it asks relatively little upfront, letting users start building immediately, but early templates are critical for forming user habits and guiding user behavior from moment 0.
Venmo reverses the pattern: before any real value, it demands trust and compliance: identity, phone, and bank verification. The payoff (transferring money) is powerful but delayed, so every verification step risks attrition. However, because people usually download Venmo when they immediately need it for a specific reason (say to pay back a friend for dinner right now), linking a bank and the higher activation energy here probably won’t deter them.
Ultimately, Instagram optimizes for engagement velocity, Notion for creative agency, and Venmo for security integrity. Their trade-offs mirror their business models: ad-driven networks tolerate mild privacy loss, SaaS tools trade data for usability, and fintechs sacrifice speed for regulatory survival.
