The most common question we hear from early founders is whether the first version of their product should be free while it's still rough. The honest answer is almost always no - charge from day one, even while it's genuinely unfinished.
The exact moment someone types in their card number is the moment you have real proof the pitch worked.
A free user tells you almost nothing
People will try almost anything if it costs nothing - click around for two minutes, then leave, and you'll never know why. A paying user behaves completely differently: they email you the moment something breaks, they tell you specifically what's missing, because they're now invested in the thing working, not just curious about it.
The real test of whether it's needed
If the product solves a genuinely painful business problem, people will pay for a half-finished version of it that saves them real time. Hesitating to charge because "it isn't ready" is often a quieter admission that the product solves a nice-to-have rather than a must-have - and that's a more useful thing to learn in week one than in month six.
How to actually run it
A fourteen-day free trial is fine, but require a card upfront. The exact moment someone types in their card number is the moment you have real proof the pitch worked - not a survey answer, not a nice comment, an actual purchase decision. Everything you learn after that point is worth more than everything you learned before it.
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