Do pre populated templates actually boost user activation?

Product tours are almost always a trap because everyone just looks for the skip button immediately.

We noticed the same thing with our setup asking users to fill out empty forms right after sign-up killed our conversion rate.

Switching to dummy data and pre-built templates made a huge difference because users could instantly see what the end result looks like without spending ten minutes configuring settings.

Do you give new sign-ups sample project data right out of the box?