Webflow

One of our partners was previously VP of Marketing for Webflow, where he developed the following onboarding flow.

First, we made sure we understood who we were onboarding so we could best customize their experience:

Next:

• Once a user signed up, we threw them right in the website designer so they could get their hands dirty experiencing the power of the app. We didn’t want to intercept this experience with a long, boring walkthrough video or tutorial.
• But, after 30s, we knew they’d get overwhelmed by the complexity of the tool, so now we force a menu to automatically reveal itself. This menu contains a list of short, 60s embedded videos that walk you through each step toward becoming a power user.
• The first video is just a 60s timelapse of a site being built in Webflow. This shows the extreme power and simplicity of the app. This was the end goal on display. And the video is enticing to watch because you see a site go from blank canvas to beautiful landing page through a few simple motions.

That's how you design an onboarding for a complex SaaS product.

Twitter

Twitter studied their users' onboarding behavior and discovered that if a new user doesn’t follow at least a handful of Twitter users immediately upon signing up, they’re much less likely to return.

So, they redesigned their onboarding to force users to follow a minimum of five people.

And they ensured this process was really low-friction: They show you celebrities you're likely familiar with from topics (e.g. sports, movies) you indicate you care about.

Duolingo

Here's one more example: this Duolingo onboarding experience. It’s by far the best we’ve ever seen for a complicated SaaS product.