What is Time To Value (TTV) and Why It’s the North Star of PLG

In the glossy world of SaaS metrics, we often get distracted by the vanity numbers. We track Daily Active Users (DAU) to stroke our egos. We track Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) to please investors. We track Churn Rate to calm our anxiety.

But there is one metric that sits upstream of all of them. A metric that predicts churn before it happens and defines the quality of your user's first impression: Time To Value (TTV).

If DAU tells you how many people are using your product, Time To Value tells you how likely they are to stay.

Defining TTV: It's Not Just "Speed"

At its simplest, Time To Value is the duration between two timestamps:

Start: The moment a user intends to use your product (usually Signup).
Finish: The "Aha!" moment—the specific action that proves your product solved their problem.

However, treating TTV purely as a race against the clock is a mistake. It is not just about being fast. It is about Momentum Preservation.

Imagine your user starts with a tank of "Cognitive Fuel."

Sign Up Form: -10% fuel.
Email Verification: -20% fuel.
Confusing Dashboard: -30% fuel.
"Import Data" Error: -40% fuel.

If the fuel tank hits 0% before they reach the "Aha!" moment, they churn. It doesn't matter if your product is the best in the world. They ran out of gas before they saw the view.

Real-World Examples of TTV

TTV looks different depending on what "Value" means for your product.

Notice that "Setup" is necessary friction. You can't get an Uber without entering a destination. But the goal of PLG is to compress that setup time to the absolute minimum required physics.

Why TTV Averages Are Dangerous

If you ask a Product Manager, "What is your TTV?", they might say: "On average, it takes 2.5 days."

This is a dangerous number. Averages lie.

Imagine two users:

User A (Power User): Activates in 10 minutes.
User B (Struggling User): Activates in 5 days.
Average: ~2.5 days.

If you optimize for the "Average" user, you are optimizing for a ghost. User A didn't need your help. User B was miserable and almost churned.

At Tivalio, we believe in measuring the TTV Distribution, specifically the P90 (90th Percentile).

P90 TTV answers: "How long does it take for the slowest 10% of successful users to succeed?"

If your P90 is 14 days, it means a significant chunk of your users are fighting your product for two weeks before getting value. That is where your churn lives.

The 3 Pillars of TTV Optimization

To operationalize Time To Value, you need to shift your mindset from "Features" to "Flows".

1. Watch (Measurement)

You cannot fix what you cannot see. You need to instrument your analytics to capture the timestamp of signup and the timestamp of value. By visualizing this histogram, you usually find a "bi-modal" distribution: a group that gets it instantly, and a group that struggles.

2. Understand (Segmentation)

Why is the "Struggling Group" slow?

Are they on Mobile?
Did they skip the tutorial?
Are they inviting colleagues?
Is it a specific industry?

Context is clarity. Often, "Slow TTV" isn't a UI problem; it's a Who problem. You might find that Enterprise users have a 10x longer TTV naturally because they need legal approval. That's fine—but you should segment them out so they don't skew your data.

3. Improve (Intervention)

Once you know who is slow and where they stop, you can intervene.

Smart Defaults: Don't ask them to configure settings; provide a "Best Practice" default.
Templates: Don't give them a blank canvas; give them a starting point.
Checklists: Guide them through the necessary setup steps linearly.

Conclusion

Time To Value is the North Star of Activation. It aligns your team's incentives with the user's success. When you reduce TTV, you aren't just making a graph look better; you are giving your users their time back, respecting their attention, and dramatically increasing the odds that they will become lifelong customers.

Stop asking specific "did they convert?" and start asking "how fast did they succeed?".