How Onboarding Turned 1,000 Free Users Into a Six-Figure ARR
Orbit Startups
Orbit Startups is a venture capital firm investing in high growth technology startups in emerging and frontier markets.
B2B startups love dashboards. Gary Yau Chan, co-founder of Clarity Inbox, loves user friction more.
Instead of shipping features and guessing what worked, he got on 15 onboarding calls a day, asked real questions, and watched customers struggle live. Each pain point became a roadmap. Each screen share, a pricing experiment. The result? A 7% free-to-paid conversion rate—without a sales team.
At Orbit Growth Summit, Gary broke down how onboarding became a product discovery tool, pricing lab, and go-to-market engine in one.
The kicker: they ditched bundles. Modular pricing outperformed “good-better-best” by cutting sales cycles in half and giving customers exactly what they wanted.
Startups don’t need sales reps—they need better listeners.
Portfolio News
NewCampus(Orbit 2022) raised $3.3 million in a funding round led by Juvo Ventures, SOSV, M Venture Partners, and SuperCharger Ventures. Read more >>
iMotorbike(Orbit 2022) co-founder Sharmeen Looi on carving a path in the motorcycle industry. Read more >>
Esports Charts & Streams Charts(Orbit 2019) has been shortlisted for Esports Coverage Platform of the Decade at the Esports Awards 2025. Read more >>
PriyoShop(Orbit 2022) partners with BRAC Bank PLC to expand access to digitally processed financing for rural and semi-urban micro-merchants. Read more >>
Matt Spriegel, Founder & CEO of Atiom(Orbit 2019), shares how staff growth can be inspired through gamification. Read more >>
New Investments
Refurbi – LatAm’s trusted circular ecosystem for affordable, sustainable refurbished mobile devices—bridging value, quality, and impact.
Route.money – a fintech platform helping digitize F&B businesses in Africa.
SOSO CARE – an affordable and accessible health insurance for 200 million uninsured Nigerians—paid for with recyclables.
Elevatix – an AI-powered platform helping mobile apps and games boost revenue from in-app purchases.
VenueX – a platform to boost in-store sales for brand owners.
What We're Reading
I help develop startup programs with governments, who often come with a lot of requirements, because each program has so many stakeholders from different departments. This book taught me to take a step back and evaluate those requirements and not just take them at face value. In the same way we tell our founders to ask why customers want features before they just build them, I ask why to understand the motivations of each stakeholder to guide better program development.
— Jae woong Choi, Program Analyst
We're Hiring!
We're looking for a Program Manager in the UAE to join our global team and help startups grow in frontier and emerging markets. Who are the most talented people you know that we should hire? Introduce them to us! - See Jobs >>
Thanks for reading our newsletter, where we share news from the Orbit ecosystem. If you haven't already, please subscribe!