How do you handle churn caused by value friction over price resistance?

Early on, we assumed cancellation reasons were mostly financial that users just didn't want to pay our monthly fee. But looking closely at user drop off data revealed something surprising.

Most churned users never even hit their plan limits or core paywalls. They canceled simply because the setup effort was too high to reach their first aha! moment. Lowering prices or offering discounts doesn't fix a onboarding flow that takes 3 days to deliver value.

For founders who have tackled this: how do you redesign your onboarding or activation steps to get users to core value before they lose interest?