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by tejohnso 862 days ago
Doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me that this person is going to spend 5 hours a month pro bono on a few projects with no attachments or sales hustle. Do you have evidence that they are being disingenuous? You're accusing them of being dishonest.
3 comments

I don't have a peer-reviewed study to validate my wild hypothesis, I'm just a simple businessman, but if you go to the Pricing tier of the page, you'll see Free, and then several paid tiers of service. Then, when you go to subscribe to the Free 5 hours tier, you are asked for a credit card, email, among other things. The idea is to remove friction for easily sliding prospects down the funnel until they ultimately agree to pay you money. That's not pro bono, or public good no-strings-attached work, that's modern sales 101.
Offering a free service without any kind of barrier would be ridiculous. It is not unknown that free services would ask you for a credit card. For example, website hosting, at a lot of places would ask you for a credit card, even on a free plan. This is to distinguish between bots, scammers and spammers and real human users.
> Is there a reason you're so certain that they are being disingenuous?

Well, for starters because 5 hours/month amounts to almost nothing in any non trivial project.

I am not saying this is dishonesty or a scam, I think it is a legitimate way of marketing your services. But I would be the fool if I thought that there would be no followup.

He's not being disingenuous. He said that he would work 5 free hours. Its not his obligation to provide you a detailed outline of all his intentions.