The empty-state fork most teams skip
Install cohorts look healthy while first-session users stare at blank lists. If you never fire an event for “empty feed shown,” your funnel pretends those people vanished for mysterious reasons.
Instrument the silence
Track when an empty state appears, how long it stays, and whether the user taps a recovery action. That trio often explains more activation loss than any paywall chart.
Critique prompt
In Funnel Labs we ask: “If the database is empty on day one, what story does the product tell?” Teams that answer with a screenshot usually discover they never measured that screenshot.