As soon as someone touches your product / service / website / content, the timer starts.

You’re on the clock to deliver value as fast as possible, so that person sticks around.

Here’s an unorthodox playbook used by one of the internet’s most loved products to build instant trust with every person that finds them.

Enjoy.

— Tom

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Put people directly in your product

Chess Move

The what: A TLDR explanation of the strategy

When you try a SaaS, you're often met with:

• A flashy marketing page

• Multiple CTAs

• "Book a demo"

• Account creation

• Authentication

• Email verification

• Card details

• Loading screen

• “Creating your workspace”

• Unskippable onboarding flows

Conventional wisdom says: landing page to ‘convert’ leads → capture emails → guide users through the product.

Open-source whiteboarding tool Excalidraw took a radically different approach to onboarding: eliminate it entirely.

Visit excalidraw.com and you’re put directly into a fully-functional product. No signup. No tutorial. Just a blank canvas ready for your first drawing.

Today, they have 850,000 monthly active users…

… and 89,000 GitHub stars, making it the 75th most popular public repo (!)

Here’s a couple of strategic ideas that got them there.

Breakdown

The how: The strategic playbook boiled down to 3x key takeaways

1.  Instant accessibility

Most products make you work + think to extract value. Excalidraw flips this paradigm - value extraction begins instantly for all traffic.

The product design prioritises minimising friction over capturing data:

• No account creation = no abandoned user journeys

• No email verification = no ‘hope they come back’

• No download required = works on any browser

• No card details = valuable free utility

• No storage limits = create without constraints

Every PLG company dreams about the same word-of-mouth flywheel:

1. User discovers product

2. User onboards product

3. User gets value from product

4. User shares product

5. New users discover product

The only problem is, most companies put 47 actions between step 1 and step 2, so only a tiny % of traffic even has a chance of getting to step 3.

Excalidraw completely eliminates step 2, and immediately optimises for step 3.

Excalidraw's frictionless accessibility extends beyond the website - the core experience is embeddable anywhere, allowing other websites and products to build Excalidraw into their own interfaces.

Once again, no account/verification/payment/tutorial required.

2. Design for immediate competency

Excalidraw's interface indicates an important truth about user psychology: the faster someone feels competent using your tool, the more likely they'll get value (and continue using it).

Unlike more complex alternatives, Excalidraw intentionally presents a simplified toolset (just 10 core tools) of essential functions, making it easy to master.

By eschewing common UX anti-patterns (feature-dumping to showcase product depth, guided tours that delay core usage, etc.) the learning curve is nearly flat.

Familiar metaphors drawn from physical whiteboards +
Visual affordances suggesting how tools work without explanation +
Ultra-minimal guidance that disappears as you engage +
WYSIWYG (pronounced wiz-ee-wig) visualisation philosophy =

Using Excalidraw for the first time feels like you’ve already used it 1000 times.

Typical new tool = Sign up before you can use it + learn it before you can use it

Excalidraw = No onboarding + you already know how to use it

3. Scrappiness is a feature, not a bug

Excalidraw's most distinctive feature is the hand-drawn, wobbly, playful aesthetic.

Unlike professional diagramming tools that obsess over pixel-perfect precision, Excalidraw deliberately embraces imperfection:

• Lines have subtle irregularities mimicking hand-drawn strokes

• Shapes maintain slight inconsistencies in their geometry

• Text appears casual rather than typographically precise

This "intentionally imperfect" design does more than create a novel look-and-feel: it fundamentally changes the psychology and behaviour of their users:

→ First, it speeds up ideation. Professional design software, CAD tools, and enterprise feature-heavy platforms subconsciously pressure users to perfect their creations - alignment, spacing, consistency.

Excalidraw has a deep understanding of their use case: for most of their users the core job is quick visual communication, so by removing the focus on perfectionism, they do a better job of keeping users focused on creating rather than polishing.

→ Second, it lowers the bar for sharing. When a diagram looks polished, users hesitate to distribute incomplete work.

The sketchiness signals "this is a work in progress" or "this is a thinking tool," making users comfortable sharing their work (and Excalidraw) earlier and more frequently.

→ Third, it creates immediate brand recognition. When a screenshot or diagram created in Excalidraw appears in Slack, presentations, docs, or on social, the distinct visual style is an unmistakable calling card for the product.

Every shared diagram becomes an organic marketing touchpoint that makes you think “Cool visual - what tool was it made on?” / “I’m seeing this style everywhere now - must be popular” / “This was definitely made on Excalidraw”.

It only takes one of these touchpoints to spark curiosity → you check out the Excalidraw website → you land directly in-product → the cycle continues.

Rabbit Hole

The where: 3x high-signal resources to learn more

Excalidraw in 2024 ↗

[4 minute read]

The only thing better than a yearly recap:

A series of yearly recaps that show progression.

Here’s the Excalidraw story from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020.

Why is Excalidraw so f*cking good? ↗

[3 minute read]

Excalidraw typically becomes your favourite tool you didn’t know you needed.

Here’s a few reasons why.

(Written 4yrs ago - amazing how many of these defining early product characteristics still hold true!)

Under the hood of the virtual whiteboard ↗

[20 minute watch]

A rare first-hand product strategy presentation, delivered by Excalidraw creator Christopher Chedeau.

Technical architecture. Multiplayer functionality. COVID-19 response. End-to-end encryption. SaaS model to fund open-source development.

A truly special piece of content for a truly unique product.

That’s all for today’s breakdown - hope you enjoyed!

One of my fave tools. Highly recommend giving it a try.

(More of my fave tools here!)

— Tom

P.S. My latest value-first experiment is coming. Click here to be the first one in.

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