Why TTF might be the most important metric you’re not tracking

I came across the concept of TTF during a podcast, and it's stuck with me since. So what is TTF and why should you care? Let’s jump in.

TTF is Time to Fun, a principle from game design that measures how soon the player experiences joy or delight after getting started. There are definitely parallels that can be applied to sales demos, training sessions, and more for B2B applications.

Most SaaS products already track TTV (Time to Value). It’s a useful ROI metric. But TTF is different. Focusing on how soon a user feels a spark that makes them want to keep going. This is an adoption indicator.

In consumer products, it’s easy to see. Imagine Super Mario, click “start game” and within the first few seconds, you’ve jumped over or defeated an enemy, collected coins, and leveraged a power-up. You have fun while learning the core mechanics. The design rewards curiosity. This is also why many mobile game ads now feature playable levels.

Most B2B tools miss this. They prioritize seriousness over delight. The first experience is often a form to fill out or a training video to watch. No sense of progress. No moment of “oh, that’s cool.”

I mention all of this because many of the readers of this newsletter lead innovation or knowledge management teams. You are shaping the experience of the software rollout. So it’s worth considering how soon your users can feel something rewarding?

Can they complete a simple task within the first minute? See visible feedback? Feel a sense of mastery or ease? That’s what builds stickiness.

Reducing TTF helps to design for momentum. Let people taste progress early, and they’ll chase it again tomorrow.

Finds

Users Only Care About 20% of Your Application //

“most users will only ever use about 20% of your application's features, but each user uses a different 20%.”

Whether pitching or focusing on training, it’s easy to focus on showing everything. Instead, we should focus on understanding which 20% of the product will be most impactful, and show just that. You can always add more later.

McKinsey’s "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘪𝘨 𝘙𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬” //

McKinsey’s report on the “agentic age” argues that the next wave of advantage won’t come from adopting AI tools, but from redesigning work around them. As AI acts more like a teammate than a tool, traditional moats (scale, process, etc.) erode. Distinctiveness will come from things machines can’t easily copy. This means culture, data, and adaptive leadership become critical. The report is worth a read if you’re thinking about how to rebuild workflows or redefine roles as humans and AI start to collaborate in real time.

Vals Legal AI Report //

Val’s report examines how four AI products perform on legal research tasks, comparing their performance with that of a lawyer control group. AI performed better overall than lawyers, and both specialist and generalist AI tools produce highly accurate answers to legal research questions. Artificial Lawyer’s write-up adds useful color and tension between optimism and fatigue.

Until next time.