Marcelino J

The way I think about it for what I'm building: free should be enough to make someone a believer. Not a teaser, not a hook. Actually useful on its own. If they upgrade, it's because they want more of something that already worked. Gate the depth, not the discovery. Most products get that backwards.

For me it's not about the badge. It's validation from people who actually build things. Customers don't always tell you if something is a real problem or just a nice-to-have. Builders do. The distribution is secondary. The signal is the point.

The black hole is the one that gets me. You spend real time tailoring something, hit send, and then nothing. No signal. You don't know if it was opened, who saw it, or if the whole thing was dead on arrival. The "Easy Apply" problem compounds it too. The volume on both sides is broken now. Candidates are spraying, companies are drowning, and nobody's actually communicating. It's just noise.