When the thing that gets people in is not the product

Agni is a free iOS app that teaches you to use AI in short daily lessons. It also gives you a score out of 100, benchmarked against people doing the same kind of job in your country.

The score is what gets people in. The lessons are what the product actually is. Those are two different things, and we have gone back and forth on how much to lean on the gap between them.

The case for leading with the score: it answers a question people genuinely have and cannot answer anywhere else. Almost nobody knows whether they are behind on AI. A number with a comparison attached is concrete in a way that "learn AI" never is.

The case against: a score is a one-off. You take it, you find out, you leave. Nothing about it brings you back on a Tuesday. The lessons are the part that would change anything, and they are the harder sell.

Where we have landed for now: the copy leads with the learning and the score does the acquisition work quietly behind it. We may well be wrong about that.

If you have been here: when your hook and your product are different things, do you market the hook and hope people stay, or market the product and accept a smaller top of funnel?