We Put $100 in Escrow and Asked Strangers to Judge Us

Last week I did something that felt uncomfortable.

I put $100 of our own money in escrow and asked the internet to make content about our product. Best post or thread wins. Fifty for first, thirty for second, twenty for third. I read every entry and pick three. The second I confirm, the money lands.

No agency. No brief. No approval process. Strangers, a deadline, and money that moves the moment the work is real.

Twenty entries came in from seventeen people.

Here is what I learned.

Every entry meant somebody put a piece of their own reputation on us. They attached their name, their face, their audience to a product with almost no track record.

One person went further than I expected. He wanted to see if our claims were true, so he tested them himself. He signed up, created a product, priced it, set the terms, and published it live. Then he documented every step with screenshots. His entire entry was proof.

Another recorded herself on camera, in Spanish, and published the video on four platforms. The only real face in the whole field.

The winner walked through the product end to end with a screen recording and the exact numbers: the creator keeps 87, the person who shared it takes 10, we take 3. She explained it better than some of our own material does.

I expected quick posts written for the prize. Some of those came, and the scoring handled them.

What I did not expect: custom graphic series. Research threads citing our real milestones. People answering questions in their own replies, defending the product to their own followers.

A few entries got facts wrong. One presented a feature that is still in build as live. One invented numbers we have never claimed. Those did not place, and that is the point of judging on accuracy: the truth about the product is good enough.

The interesting part was never the content. It was the mechanism.

The $100 sat in escrow from day one. Everyone could verify it was real before writing a word. Nobody had to trust me, chase an invoice, or wait sixty days for a transfer. Work, verdict, money. Under a second, with a receipt anyone can check.

That is the whole thesis of what we are building, tested on ourselves, in public: the work takes a day. The money should not take sixty.

Three people got paid today. The receipts are public.

Seventeen people taught me more about our product in three days than a month of quiet building. Where the message lands, where it bends, what strangers actually say when they explain you to their friends.

We are just getting started.

This is the link if you want to check it out: