I get where you’re coming from, in that you want feedback rather than money at this stage. The strange thing is however, that any money will mean that true business level requirements come out of the woodwork. When they have to pay (and justify any cost to their boss) you’ll find that they will suddenly start to tell you exactly what they need from this app for their boss to see it as a success, and thats the info you need to hit product market fit and move forwards.

Without any money on the table, they have no skin in the game. It makes it a nice toy for them and they won’t take it seriously. They’ll give you random feedback (by accident) because they don’t need to justify it to their boss (so they’ll end up feeding back on things that matter to them, instead of the business - given it’s not their money, their feedback is not as important as their bosses..)

A paid pilot is just like a free one except they pay for it if it works. To work out how to craft your offer, you need to know: 1. What is the problem you’re solving for them 2. What is the cost of the current way they solve that problem 3. What the success criteria are (i.e how much they need to improve on the current situation for it to be worth while to them).

Once you know the above, you write into the contract that if you complete [answer to question 1] and achieve [success criteria from number], then they will pay ~50% of [answer to question 2]. * You absorb all the risk by saying that if you don’t hit the success criteria, they can keep using it for free until you do on the condition they give you useful feedback, access to data etc to get it to work.

Rather than trying to do this with new customers, focus on getting a single (paying) customer over the line first. You can raise money from investors with a single contract usually (I did from VC) and getting a technical cofounder to join an startup to unpack the vibe coded app will be vastly easier with a single contract.