Get them to a magic moment faster ✨

Hi there,

What's your product's magic moment?

The one moment a customer experiences, and instantly thinks, “Oh. Wow.”

I’ve been re-reading Andrew Chen’s The Cold Start Problem (highly recommended), and one idea keeps jumping off the page: the fastest-growing products - not just networked ones - deliberately engineer these magic moments and get users to them fast.

You’ve definitely felt this yourself; that instant where a product’s value becomes crystal clear. That first “okay… this is a game changer.”

Because that moment is the moment your product finally does its job.

And the truth is: every product has a magic moment hiding somewhere in the customer journey. Most teams just haven’t mapped it out yet.

Why users often miss the value (even when it’s there)

Most new customers don’t abandon your product because they doubt your value prop. They leave because they never reach the moment that proves it.

So - typically - you end up with:

• flaky activation

• users bouncing during onboarding

• early confusion

• messaging that never quite lands as intended

In almost all cases, the magic moment exists, and when customers miss it, the future relationship with your product never really stands a chance.

What a real magic moment looks like

Here’s the thing most teams miss:

Your magic moment isn’t mystical. It’s findable, testable, and completely engineerable.

Once you know exactly when a user feels the transformation your product promises, you can redesign the golden path to guide them straight to it.

I had one myself recently.

I discovered the Wispr Flow app, which lets me write these newsletters almost entirely with my voice.

The first time I dictated a paragraph and it captured (and corrected) my words precisely, I felt that unmistakable spark: Oh wow… this completely changes how I work.

That’s a magic moment. Not theoretical. Emotional. Immediate.

And your customers will have had moments just like this.

Here are a couple of real-life examples from our own customer interviews and user reviews; moments where value really clicked:

"... it has really helped us find a structure for our reporting and [the prompts] helped capture really important narratives that we might have lost."

"Before, I spent a huge part of my day entering data, I honestly can't imagine trying to function again without it."

Here’s another one:

"It transforms a sea of numbers into something immediately understandable for my clients."

These are magic moments — clear, emotional signals that the product is delivering the transformation it promises, each revealing the underlying job customers are trying to get done: clearer reporting, reclaimed time, and friction-free client communication.

So what does this really change?

When you know the exact moment a user ‘gets it’, you can:

1. align your entire team around a shared definition of value

2. shorten onboarding dramatically

3. reduce cognitive load in early steps

4. refine messaging to highlight what truly matters

5. improve retention because value lands sooner

6. run sharper growth experiments with clearer success signals

And here’s something else worth emphasising: your magic moment is a major stepping stone in the golden path to product adoption.

When you understand where most of these moments naturally occur, you can intentionally shape the golden path so customers cannot avoid hitting them.

Put simply, if customers experience the magic moment early on, they're much more likely to stick around.

A quick tool to help you locate yours

Here are two or three things to challenge your team on when hunting for your product’s magic moment:

The Magic Moment Locator™ 😉

1. What early action correlates most strongly with long-term retention?

2. When do users show genuine positive emotion in interviews?

3. What do 5-star reviews all point to, even if worded differently?

You’re looking for the moment your value proposition becomes felt, not just understood.

A good result: a new user should reach their first magic moment within minutes of using your product, not hours.

• Map every step from signup → magic moment.

• Highlight anything that delays or distracts from experiencing value.

• Pending what’s feasible, cut or compress so the path feels almost unfairly direct.

If you know where the magic happens and design around it, the rest of your funnel suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Speak soon,

Peter

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