This Week at YC

November 9th, 2023

The “Aha!” moment. It’s a phrase we use a lot around YC. But what is it?

As YC Group Partner Aaron Epstein put it recently, it’s that moment when you're introducing a potential user to your product and they suddenly go “Oh wow — this is amazing. This is the thing I’ve been looking for.”

It’s that instant where things click; that moment when, for the audience you’re trying to reach, the story suddenly tells itself.

The sooner you can get someone to that moment, the better. It might seem obvious when laid out like that — but it’s wild how often startups bury that moment so much deeper than it really needs to be. There’s a reason this topic comes up on Design Review again and again.

Maybe they’re worried about listing out every. single. feature. Maybe they’re trying to get you to complete a signup process that’s about ten questions too long.

But once you’ve caught someone’s attention, the challenge becomes not losing it. Every click you put between the landing page and the “Aha!” moment is another opportunity for them to stop caring.

“People implement too many steps; too many clicks; too many things that get in the way and create more friction,” says Aaron. “One of the best ways to improve conversion rates is to just reduce the number of steps that it takes to get in the door.”

So how do you get people to that moment faster? On a recent episode of Design Review, Pete Koomen and Aaron covered two key points:

1) Find it: Make sure you truly know what the “aha” moment is. You might think you know it instinctively — but what does the data say? Break the analytics down step-by-step. “You can use those kinds of analytics to figure out how far somebody needs to get before they’re likely to sign up,” says Pete. “That’s a great clue for when that aha moment actually happens for your users.”

2) Omit needless steps: “I’ve seen this when working with founders in the past,” says Aaron. “We get on a whiteboard and we map out the conversion funnel and all the steps, and the aha moment is at like, step seven. And they realize they don’t actually need steps two, four, five! They cut them out and suddenly the aha moment becomes step two, and everything improves from there.”

Find your "Aha!" moment, and get people there as soon as possible.