Article · 12 min read

What Is TTV: A Complete Guide to Time to Value

Amplitude Free Beginner

It defines time to value precisely enough to instrument: a start event, a value event, and the gap between them. The insistence that logging in is not value is the point most teams need to hear.

  • Value means the customer accomplished something, not that they logged in or clicked around.
  • Track medians rather than averages, since time-to-value distributions have long tails.
  • Watch the 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles to see the full spread of experience.
  • Different roles need different value events: an admin connects a source, an analyst shares a dashboard.
Open on amplitude.com ↗

It answers 6 questions

  1. Everyone says find your aha moment. What is it actually, and how do I find ours?
  2. What should a brand new user see in the first minute after they sign up?
  3. How do I pick one activation metric when the product supports five very different use cases?
  4. How do I cut time to value when the product genuinely needs setup work before it does anything useful?
  5. How do I set an activation target the whole company will actually rally behind?
  6. Which companies have genuinely fast time to value, and what did they cut to get there?

Read with it

  1. Benchmarks from 500 plus products: 34 percent average, 36 percent for SaaS. If you have ever wondered whether your number is... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 12 min read What is a good activation rate Lenny Rachitsky and Yuriy Timen
  2. Twenty onboarding flows torn apart by product category, so you can find the two or three closest to yours instead of copying... Appcues Article · 20 min read SaaS Onboarding Examples: Lessons from 20+ Top Products Sara Detrik
  3. A three step method (brainstorm milestones, regress against retention, then experiment to prove causation) with worked examples... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 15 min read How to determine your activation metric Lenny Rachitsky
  4. The practical build guide: welcome screens, checklists, contextual tooltips, and where each one actually belongs. It also gives... Appcues Article · 15 min read In-app onboarding: A step-by-step guide for 2026 Jared DeLuca
  5. Goes past the single aha metric to a three stage model (setup, aha, habit) with Apollo.io and Appcues case studies, plus the... Product Growth Article · 25 min read How to Measure Onboarding: Advanced Topics in Activation Metrics Aakash Gupta and Ramli John
  6. Hila Qu built PLG at GitLab and scaled Acorns, and this is the rare free piece that maps the sales-led funnel against the... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 20 min read Five steps to starting your product-led growth motion Hila Qu
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →