Hey, it’s Anastasia Kudrow.
If you’ve downloaded one of my paywall collections, onboarding teardowns, PLG guides in the past or were subscribed to Growing Pains… hi again 👋
I’m starting a newsletter. It’s called Ghosted, and it’s for product teams who want to stop losing users after signup.
Each issue breaks down one behavioral pattern behind user drop-off, and shows how to design onboarding, pricing, and retention strategies that work with human behavior, not against it.
So when everyone else is stuck guessing why users leave, you’ll have a clear answer.
If that’s not your thing, no hard feelings, just hit unsubscribe below and I won’t bother you again.
But if it is, stick around and read the first issue right here 👇
Ever wonder why users drop off after doing most of the setup?
I was helping a team with a social media scheduling tool.
Think: content calendar, AI drafts, drag-and-drop posts.
New users signed up, connected accounts, set preferences…
Then… nothing.
We watched session replays.
No bugs. No real confusion.
They hovered. Scrolled. Paused. Left.
Here’s what we missed:
After the setup, the calendar stayed empty.
No sample posts. No suggested layout.
Nothing to show what a full week could look like.
They weren’t stuck.
They just couldn’t picture what they were working toward.
Our checklists didn’t really help because this was at play:
Ambiguity Aversion: bigger than a progress bar
Ambiguity Aversion explains why people avoid action when the outcome is unclear.
We don’t just need steps.
We need a picture of where those steps lead.
In onboarding, if users can’t imagine what success looks like, they stall — even if the flow is smooth.
They don’t think,
“This is hard.”
They think,
“I don’t know what I’m doing this for.”
That’s not friction. That’s ambiguity.
And ambiguity kills motivation.
Why we fall into this trap
Founders want users to learn EVERYTHING about the product.
PMs want to show off flexibility.
Marketing adds checklists to drive “completion.”
But users don’t show up to finish onboarding.
They show up to solve their problem.
If they can’t see what success looks like early —
they assume they’re wasting their time.
So they leave.