a day ago
- Free tiers relied on the asymmetry between a company's ability to build and a user's inability, but AI prompting has collapsed that gap, allowing users to create their own minimal versions of SaaS products.
- Users who build their own versions using AI become 'ghosts' that bypass traditional funnels, never entering the lead pipeline.
- Freemium now competes not only with other free tiers but with the user's ability to prompt an AI to replicate the free tier's functionality.
- The emerging alternative is 'skill suites'—packages of expertise for AI agents that teach domain knowledge—used as lead generation instead of constrained free tiers.
- Examples include Corey Haines' Marketing Skills and Paul Bakaus' Impeccable design vocabulary skill, both free and forkable, which raise the quality of AI outputs with hard-won expertise.
- The honest business model: give away skills to get users 60% of the way, then convert them for the remaining 40% (scale, reliability, edge cases), accepting that some may never convert but still spread the word.