I worked on a (once) popular Saas app :) We were losing customers when I came in

… I worked on a (once) popular Saas app :) We were losing customers when I came in. But then started growing again (slowly) when we started shipping a bunch of great things. But then the owner wanted to get rid of the "free trial" and was adamant we offer a free version. That would boost our growth to an incredible new level he promised. I could see the reasoning. Our free trial still required you give us a credit card up front. We just wouldn't charge you for 30 days. Asking for a credit card has to be bad for growth, right? People want to kick the tires before they become our customers, and there's a lot more of those folks. So we ditched the collection of credit cards up front and went to a totally free plan. You could upgrade to a paid plan of course. Growth started tanking again and we never got it back. One theory was collecting the credit card just got the really eager shoppers and now our growth was from zombie, forgetful, monthly Saas payments. And that's valid of course. …