We killed our KYC requirement and started allowing free skills. Here's why.

Quick update from building https://skillhq.dev — the marketplace for Claude Code skills.

When we launched, every seller had to complete Stripe Connect KYC before publishing a single skill. Bank details, ID verification, the works. We thought it was the responsible move.

It wasn't. It was a wall.

The casual builder who just wrote a useful skill on a Sunday afternoon doesn't want to upload their passport to find out if anyone will pay €5 for it.

They close the tab.

So we rebuilt seller onboarding around two tiers:

Starter (default)
- No KYC. No bank details. Just an email and a PayPal address for payouts.
- Publish in under 60 seconds.
- 80% revenue share.
- SkillHQ acts as Merchant of Record (we handle Stripe Tax for buyers).
- On-demand PayPal payouts (€20 minimum, 1 free per month).

Pro
- Full Stripe Connect KYC.
- 85% revenue share, payouts straight to your bank.
- Auto-upgrades when you hit the EU DAC7 threshold (€2k/yr or 30 transactions).

The bet: lower the activation energy for the long tail of casual sellers, then graduate the serious ones to better economics once they have proof of demand.

We also turned on free skills (€0).

This was harder for me to greenlight — we're a paid marketplace, why list free stuff?

Two reasons:

1. ClawHub creators are reportedly making €600–€20k/month selling skills off-platform via Gumroad, but the discovery layer is the free directories. Free skills are how builders earn an audience before they earn money.
2. "Free with a paid premium version" is one of the most natural funnels in software. We were blocking it for ideological reasons.

Now you can ship a free skill, build install count + reviews, then publish a Pro version next to it. Same creator, same surface, no friction.

Lessons for other marketplace builders:

- The compliance work you do upfront (KYC, tax, payouts) is the platform's job, not the seller's. Push it into the platform until you literally can't (DAC7 forced our hand at scale, not at zero).
- "Free tier on a paid marketplace" sounds like cannibalization. It's actually top-of-funnel.
- The friction you tolerate when you're the seller is much higher than the friction your sellers will tolerate. Onboard yourself as if you'd never heard of your product.

Anyone else moved from a single-tier seller model to a tiered one? Curious how you handled the auto-upgrade UX — that's the part we're still iterating on.