62% of signups never connect a data source - demo workspace, sample csv, or get on a call

Demo workspace regardless. It's the cheapest of the three, it works while you sleep, and it converts the 'show me before I do work' segment, which is most people. Sample CSV second. Calls are research, not a channel.

Do the call. Not forever - do it for the next 20 people and write down what happens. Within about three of them you'll know whether the blocker is generating the key, the permissions screen on the other service, or that they signed up out of curiosity and were never going to connect anything. Those are three different problems and the demo workspace only fixes one.

I did this and found the real issue was that the other service's admin screen needs a role most of my users don't have, so they'd have had to ask their own IT. No onboarding copy fixes that. A copy-paste 'ask your admin' email template does.

Careful with the demo workspace - if it's too good, people look at the fake data, nod, and leave, and now you have a metric that says they engaged. I'd rather make the connect step take 90 seconds than build a parallel product.

Concretely: put the exact click path on screen with screenshots of the other service's UI, deep-link straight to their key page rather than their homepage, and let people paste the key on the screen they're already on instead of sending them to settings.

When I had this, the thing that moved the number most was unglamorous: I stopped asking for the key during signup and asked at the moment someone clicked a thing that needed it. Same work, but now they're asking for something instead of being asked. Small numbers, but it went from most people bouncing at the key screen to most people getting through, and it felt less rude.