Why a free product tells you things a paid one never will.

I spoke at a private event recently. Invite only, a room full of nine and ten figure operators. Near the end I walked them through why we built our skills dojo and why we are giving the whole thing away, for free.

Here’s the gist.

A free product is a powerful research tool.

The dojo started as an internal thing. A marketplace where anyone on our team can upload a skill, fork someone else's version, download it, upvote it. It gives our skills a home, and the analytics section shows me which teams are engaging and who needs help. That alone is valuable.

Then we opened it to the public for free, and it picked up two more jobs.

The first is hiring. When the dojo is open, I can see who is building the most interesting skills. Their public work where I can read it. Those are the people I want to reach out to and either work with or bring on.

The second is pipeline. An open platform shows me which companies are using it, and some of them fit what we sell. So an agent reaches out and we find out whether it makes sense to connect. They used the thing before I ever knew their name.

There is a third reason and it is the uncomfortable one. I watch a lot of self-serve software heading toward zero. If someone can rebuild your tool in a weekend, charging a monthly fee for it is a slow way to lose. So we ship free versions and put our energy into the hard part: who maintains it and who optimizes it once a client has real revenue riding on it.

If you run a software company, free feels like handing away margin. But, look at what comes back. Distribution you didn’t have to buy, and a list of companies that already raised their hand.

The dojo's here. Take it, fork it, upload your own. skillsdojo.com

And if you want to learn more.

Watch the full talk here.

To the free version doing the heavy lifting,

Eric Siu