About

I fix the part where
new users give up.

I'm Bal Sieber. Twenty years across marketing and product, working with teams at Microsoft, Google, Intel, and many more. Today I run OnboardingLoop.

Titles changed. The two disciplines never did.

I spent the first half of my career in marketing as a creative director, and the second half in product, moving from UX strategy through to product management.

Across twenty years and dozens of SaaS products I kept running into the same thing. Good product, bad first impression, users who never reached the part that would have kept them. Nobody owned that gap, so it stayed broken.

OnboardingLoop is what I built to close it. Not another layer of tooltips over a confusing product, but the first run designed properly, so people reach the point where paying makes sense.

Proof

Rebuilding Heatmap from scratch.

No onboarding, and a full week before a new user saw value. It was and still is the hardest activation problem I have ever worked on.

4.9%monthly churn, down from 8.2%
+250%subscribers over the same period

Heatmap’s own figures, used with permission.

After: the rebuilt first run, with the onboarding steps, the site score and the agent inside the productAfter
Before: Heatmap's original dashboard, a wall of charts with no onboardingBefore
  1. 1. We tried Appcues, and nothing moved.

    Tooltips and a checklist laid over a product that had nothing to show yet. A tour cannot explain something whose value arrives next week.

  2. 2. The empty dashboard was the real problem.

    So I rebuilt the first run with the onboarding inside the product, and made it worth opening on day two, before the real data landed.

  3. 3. We built an immediate activation moment.

    We built a feature that scans a new user's website and provides AI insights and immediate value.

Background

The twenty years behind it.

Half in marketing, half in product. Onboarding turns out to be the one job that needs both.

  1. Focus: User-onboarding

  2. 2026

    Founded OnboardingLoop

    Packaged twenty years of marketing and product into a system other teams can buy and run.

  3. Focus: Product

  4. 2024

    Hired to rebuild Heatmap

    Brought in to redesign the entire product experience, from head-to-toe.

  5. 2018

    Director of Product, Enterprise SaaS

    Four years leading teams on software complex enough that thousands of people had to be taught how to use it.

  6. Focus: Marketing

  7. 2014

    Director of Digital Creative

    Leading marketing campaigns at a 600-person agency, and a 200-person creative department, with Starbucks and Pepsi on the roster.

  8. 2007

    Creative Director

    Cut my teeth at the tip of the spear, building websites and marketing campaigns for Google, Microsoft, Intel, BMW and Disney.

Craft

The craft underneath the system.

Product design, creative direction and campaign work for brands you already know.

More of it on Dribbble.

Case studies

See what changed for products like yours.

Founders who ran the Activation Sprint on their product.

  1. Corebee

    “The working build did what a document couldn’t. I watched my own setup flow work in my product, in code.”

    Jonathan Barr, Founder, Corebee

    View case study
  2. “For the first time, I can see our platform talking to a new user, step after step, instead of leaving them to figure it out.”

    Abhi Yadav, CEO, iCustomer

    View case study
Track record

People I built things with.

They said it better than I could.

"Bal turns complex workflows into onboarding that feels effortless."

Cory Leger

Cory Leger, Director of CRO, Heatmap

From 8.2% to 4.9% churn • 250% growth

Created from two decades of work across teams at

GoogleMicrosoftIntelCouchbaseHeatmapBlue Ocean

Your signups are waiting.

The Activation Sprint rebuilds everything that happens after they arrive.

Free Fit Check

See where you’re losing signups.