The Ghost in the Funnel

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.

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