“When we launched Fitness AI we hard-paywalled everything. The people who paid were telling us: this is real, this is a problem worth solving, and we're willing to put money down. That validated the product far faster than free users ever could.”

Paywalling everything at launch filters for users whose problem you actually solve

Moore argues that free tiers at launch add noise: free users are exploring, not confirming product-market fit. Paying users from day one constitute a cleaner signal — if strangers pay without persuasion, the problem and solution are real. The additional benefit is financial: early revenue funds iteration without fundraising urgency. The trade-off is slower install growth, which Moore accepted as a fair price for signal quality.