Time to Value

Time to Value is the elapsed time between a user's first open and the moment they reach the first real payoff the app promises.

You define the payoff event first, then measure the gap from signup to that event across the cohort. There are two versions worth separating: time to first value, the initial payoff, and time to full value, when the user has the product doing its actual job. Shorter is better because the window before value is where most new-user churn happens.

An invoicing app decides first value is sending an invoice. Median new users take 22 minutes and four screens to get there. Cut that to under five minutes with a prefilled template and the share of users who send an invoice on day one roughly doubles, which shows up later as higher week-two retention.

Median hides the tail. A clean median TTV can sit alongside a long tail of users who never reach value at all, and those are the ones churning. Track the completion rate of the value event beside the timing, or you will congratulate yourself on speed while a third of signups quietly leave having felt nothing.

Speed to value matters only if they reach it.