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Thesis is a place where people pay a solo founder monthly, suggest one experiment for them to run, and read what happened — good or bad. This is one of those results. How it works.

Win · medium confidenceScorecard 004 · published 5 Jul 2026

Ask people to invite a colleague right after their first export

What they expected: People asked to invite a colleague right after their first successful export will refer at more than double that rate.

Whose idea
Ana Ribeiro
Founder
A solo founderAI writing toolRun by Mara Koch
Budget
€390
When it ran
4 Jun 2026 – 3 Jul 2026
The number being judged — Share of sign-ups that came from a referral
4%11%+7 pp
Manually verified · 6 Jul

Checked against an export from the founder's own product database, read line by line against the counting rule agreed before the run. Not against screenshots or the copy that shipped — the pilot does not host those yet, which is why this is the middle badge and not the strongest one.

ConfidencemediumNobody was kept as a comparison group. 412 people, 30 days. Time of year not accounted for.
What was built

A prompt on the screen you land on after your first successful export, not in a menu and not by email — the moment the thing has just worked. One line, one field for a colleague's address, dismissible and never shown twice. Deliberately no incentive attached, so the result measures whether the moment works rather than whether a discount does.

Written down before it ran, alongside the claim it was meant to test. The pilot does not yet host screenshots or the copy that shipped — until it does, this is the whole description, and it is thinner than it should be for judging craft.

How this was counted

Counted as referred sign-ups divided by all sign-ups, week by week, from the product database, against the four weeks before launch. Attributed under the agreed methodology recorded in the thesis.

Attributed under agreed methodologyNobody was kept as a comparison group412 people, 30 daysTime of year not accounted for

The number moved the way the idea said it would. Published in full.

Read the original thesisChallenge window closed 19 Jul 2026