Time to Value (TTV)
The elapsed time between signup and the moment a user first experiences the product's core value.
“How long does it take a new user to get real value from the product?”
How fast onboarding delivers on the product's core promise.
Whether the value delivered is durable — pair with retention to confirm it sticks.
Numerator
N/A (duration metric)
Denominator
N/A (duration metric)
Example
Median time from signup to 'first dashboard published' across last month's cohort is 2.3 days.
Recommended visualization: Histogram / box plot of time-to-value distribution
Report median and p75, not just mean — TTV distributions are typically right-skewed with a long tail of stalled users that a mean would mask.
- Exclude users who never reach the value event from the duration calculation (report separately as a non-completion rate)
- Using a mean instead of median, which is distorted by a small number of very slow or stalled activations
Get a conversational, stakeholder-friendly explanation of this KPI, generated on demand.