The Slide I Was Afraid to Present

There’s a saying I heard once:

"Your growth lives on the other side of the thing you're avoiding."

For me, that thing was a slide.

Back when we were refining our Series A pitch deck, I spent weeks obsessing over the flow. We were doing well. Revenue was climbing. Customer logos looked great on paper. Our integrations were maturing. The team was stretched but delivering.

But there was one slide that made my stomach twist every time I reviewed it.

The churn slide.

Specifically, the data behind onboarding delays and early cancellations.

It told a clear story. And it wasn’t one I wanted to tell.

• 37% of new customers were still unactivated after 30 days

• Time to First Value (TTV) was averaging 26.5 days

• The highest churn risk? Customers in our fastest-growing segment—those scaling quickly and expecting results immediately

The slide made me confront a reality I already knew in the back of my mind:

We had a product people wanted—but we didn’t have a process they could easily adopt.

And that was on me.

The meeting

It was a virtual pitch with one of the VCs we admired most. Calendars aligned, decks rehearsed, the meeting launched on Zoom.

And then it happened.

I reached that slide.

And I paused. Cursor hovering.

Every part of me wanted to skip ahead. We had so many other impressive stories to tell—POS integrations, machine learning improvements, forecast accuracy, you name it.

But instead, I said something unplanned:

“Before I move forward, I want to highlight a slide I seriously considered cutting.”

And I shared it—plain and unvarnished.

I walked them through the friction: too many onboarding paths, too little structure, inconsistent hand-offs between sales and success, dependency on manual setup.

And I followed it up with a pivot plan:

• Trimmed our onboarding playbook from 12 steps to 3 milestone checkpoints

• Introduced real-time in-app guidance (no more buried Notion docs)

• Rebuilt our CS structure to assign reps by use case, not just account size

• Set a new operational north star: 14 days to onboard, 10 days to value

And I owned the mistake.

“This isn’t a product issue. This was a leadership blind spot. We optimized for new revenue, but we underinvested in activation. That ends here.”

What happened next?

Silence, at first. A few nods.

And then one of the partners leaned in and said:

“Thanks for not glossing over that. Most founders bury the red flags. You brought it front and center and showed how you’re addressing it. That tells me more than any ARR graph.”

We didn’t just secure interest—we built credibility.

Because here’s the truth:
Investors, customers, and teammates don’t expect perfection.
They expect clarity. Honesty. And a plan.

Why I’m sharing this

As a SaaS founder, it’s easy to become obsessed with forward momentum. You want to ship more, grow faster, and paint a narrative that shows you’re winning.

But the longer you avoid your bottlenecks, the more they quietly erode trust, morale, and growth.

The onboarding issue? It wasn’t a new problem. I had seen early signs for months. But I buried it under feature launches, marketing wins, and logo acquisitions—because those were easier to talk about.

Facing that slide forced me to grow up as a founder.

Not in terms of strategy—but in terms of responsibility.

What we learned from fixing it

Within 60 days of implementing the new onboarding structure:

• Onboarding completion rate rose from 63% to 91%

• Time to First Value dropped from 26.5 days to just under 11

• CS ticket volume in month one dropped by 43%

• Net Revenue Retention in that segment climbed 18 points

But the biggest change?

Our team finally had a shared sense of ownership over outcomes—not just activities. We weren’t just “launching” customers. We were setting them up to win, fast.

The bigger idea: What’s your unpresented slide?

Every company has one.

It’s the piece of data that makes you flinch.
The KPI you don’t open unless you have to.
The support ticket tag you quietly delete from the dashboard.

But those are the exact areas where your business is quietly bleeding—or where exponential growth is waiting.

So here’s my challenge to you:

• Look at your funnel and identify the part you’ve been avoiding

• Bring it to your next team call, and ask: “What would fixing this unlock?”

• Don’t wait for perfection—commit to progress

This one shift in thinking—from hiding weak spots to attacking them—can change your culture, your retention, your brand, and your revenue.

It certainly did for us.

If you’ve got a “slide” you’ve been avoiding—something you know needs fixing but haven’t had the headspace (or courage) to prioritize—I’d love to hear it.

Hit reply and share it with me. I won’t judge. I might even have a few ideas.

Until next Sunday,
Angelo

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💬 P.S. Been caught in the same comparison spiral? I’d love to hear how you broke free — reply to this email or drop me a message on LinkedIn.