Time to value (TTV)
The elapsed time from purchase (or kickoff) to the customer's first realized outcome — the headline measure of onboarding effectiveness and an early predictor of retention.
Time to value measures the gap between a customer buying the product and demonstrably getting something they bought it for. The hard part is not the clock; it is defining "value" concretely enough to timestamp. Setup complete is not value; login counts are not value. A useful definition names the customer's first meaningful outcome — the first workflow run in production, the first report that replaced the old spreadsheet, the first measurable result — and marks time when it happens. Many teams track two horizons: time to first value, and time to the full outcome the purchase promised.
TTV earns its status because the early relationship runs on borrowed confidence: the buyer has spent money and political capital on a promise, and every week without a visible result spends that capital down. Long TTV correlates with early churn, quiet disengagement, and renewals that arrive with no value story. The levers are mostly onboarding design — templated plans instead of improvisation, a clean sales-to-CS handoff so context survives, automation that keeps setup moving between meetings, and progress the customer can see, so the value that is being built is also being noticed.