Short transcript of Jason M. Lemkin arguing that AI apps requiring immediate credit card entry are a 'terrible sign' and likely fraudulent or low-value. He advocates for offering free trials or credits (product-led growth), cites examples of apps that provided free credits for initial use, and predicts many paid-but-ineffective AI products will churn despite large budgets.
I'll tell you the really bad sign with this category, okay? With AI, if you have to put in your credit card immediately, this is a bad sign, a terrible sign today. If your AI is good, okay. And you don't need. FD is in like a massive army. Let me try. Let me. Give me a few credits. Okay? Let me. What's the music one again? Sona. We use it all at Saster. I forgot. So I went to use it again today. I forgot I used it. They gave me another 50 credits and I upgraded. But I did three songs for free. How come I can't geo for free if it's so great? I disagree on every. I disagree on every terrible sign. If I can't try your AI app for free. You're a fraud. You're trying to get my credit card before you can provide any value. And if you look at all the ones that are exploding, half of them, not the Mercurials, but half of the ones we talk about are massive PLG plays, right? And you can't take their credit card in 60 seconds and grow this weight. You can't. You got to let them do a couple lovable prompts. You got to. Got to let me do a song. You got to Let me try ChatGPT free. And so I think all these scams are going to make a lot of revenue. It's like the old SDRs, pre Claude 4. They're all terrible too. As you know, they didn't work. And so we're going to see a bunch of things that have massive budget and don't work, and they're just going to churn.
