🚀 Why resorts give you a lei and a welcome drink before check-in

When I was a kid, my favorite place wasn't the toy store or the arcade. It was Costco on Sundays. Not for $1.50 polish sausage and soda (although still an incredible deal), but for the free samples. The moment I walked through those warehouse doors, I'd sprint to the first stand, waiting to taste whatever magic they were serving. 

Meanwhile, luxury resorts have perfected a similar ritual. If you're lucky enough to visit a tropical island paradise (or you just happen to be an avid viewer of White Lotus), you know what happens: the moment you arrive, before you've even reached the check-in desk, someone drapes a lei around your neck and hands you a cocktail. They know check-in is tedious, so they front-load the good vibes.

This is Time to Fun in action: getting users to their "aha moment" as fast as humanly possible, ideally before the boring stuff begins.

Think about the last app you downloaded. Long tutorial. Multiple screens. "Tell us about yourself." Not a strong enough password. Connect this. Enable that. You closed it before ever seeing the good stuff. That's because the TTF was way too high.

The 15-Second Masterclass from 1985

Forty years later, Super Mario Bros still has something to teach every product manager about time to value. Watch someone open the game for the first time: You're dropped into World 1-1 immediately (video walkthrough here). No tutorial screens, no character customization, no "Select Your Difficulty" menu. Within 15 seconds, you've moved right, jumped over a pit, bopped a Goomba on the head, hit a coin block, grabbed a mushroom, and grown into Super Mario. Four micro-victories. Every core mechanic is learned through play.

That's the blueprint.

Now imagine a stock trading app that, instead of hitting you with account creation, KYC forms, and risk disclosures, hands you $100 in Monopoly money the moment you open it. You tap a stock, you buy it, you watch it move. You feel the dopamine of a winning trade. The app teaches you its interface while making you feel like a tiny Wall Street god. Then, and only then, when you're hooked on watching your fake portfolio climb, it asks: "Want to make this real? Create an account."

That's your lei and cocktail.

The Data: What Happens When You Let People Play First

Duolingo faced a counterintuitive problem years ago: massive downloads, but huge drop-off before sign-up. The conventional wisdom said to capture users immediately. Hit them with account creation when you have their attention. But Duolingo had a different hypothesis: what if experiencing the product IS the pitch?

They ran a test that let users complete a full lesson and explore the skill tree before requiring account creation. Moving sign-up back just a few steps increased daily active users by 20%. Then they got even smarter. They introduced "soft walls," optional sign-up prompts with a "Later" button, before eventually hitting users with a hard wall where they'd lose progress if they didn't register. This added another 8.2% to DAUs.

The lesson: The best sales pitch for your product is your product.

Coursera recently applied this thinking by replacing their old "audit" option with course previews that unlock the entire first module, including graded assignments and AI coaching. Instead of just reading about what a course covers, you can actually experience it. Try before you buy. Early tests show stronger engagement and completion rates. Students experience outcomes before commitment.

Why This Matters (Beyond Feel-Good Metrics)

Time to Fun isn't just about being nice to users. It's about conversion, retention, and growth:

• Conversion: Users who experience value are exponentially more likely to complete onboarding and convert to paid users. They're not buying a promise. They're upgrading something they already love.

• Retention: First-session magic predicts long-term retention better than almost any other metric. Nail the first minute, keep them for months.

• Competitive moat: In a world where users have multiple different app options, being the fastest path to value is a real advantage.

But here's the hard part: it requires saying no to stakeholders who want data, permissions, and personalization up front. It requires trusting that value-first beats data-first.

So here's the reframe: You rarely need it as early as you think you do. 

• Compliance requirements? Show value first, then restrict what legally requires an account. Ex: Robinhood lets you explore stocks before KYC. 

• Need personalization? Use smart defaults and infer from behavior. Ex: Spotify starts everyone with "Today's Top Hits." 

• Worried about missing data? Every field you add up front is a 5-10% conversion tax. The question isn't "What do we need?" It's "What can we defer until after they fall in love?"

How to Design for Time to Fun: A 4-Step Playbook

1. Time your current onboarding flow. Open your product as a new user and time how long it takes to reach something genuinely useful or fun. For a project management tool, that's checking off your first task. For a meditation app, it's completing one 3-minute session.

2. Cut the line to that win. Every form field before value risks drop-off. Audit your flow and ask: "What if we moved this until after they've experienced value?" Defer everything possible: sign-up, payment, permissions, settings.

3. Reward the moment (without being cheesy). Celebrate wins with calibrated enthusiasm. Use the peak-end rule: craft a tiny peak (the moment of completion) and a clean end (a clear next step that feels optional, not homework).

4. Instrument + iterate relentlessly. Track Time to Fun, step-by-step drop-off, and first-week retention by TTF cohort. Ship "TTF trims" that remove one field, defer one permission, or default one choice. The best onboarding flows are never finished.

Because in a world where users judge your entire product in the first 30 seconds, the team that gets to fun fastest wins. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm putting on White Lotus. At least they know how to deliver a lei and a cocktail without making me create an account first.

The Riddle

The Meme