Recap about the ShipFast invites spree: When I built the site 14 months ago, I thought it would make…

Recap about the ShipFast invites spree: When I built the site 14 months ago, I thought it would make $300. So I designed the paywall like this: 1. Pay first 2. Get a unique link (?userId=unique_id) to request access to GitHub repo No login was required. I thought "If someone buys the codebase and shares it with a friend, I can't do much anyway". But I built my own Trojan Horse when I added the leaderboards. It's a public page where you can see what the makers of ShipFast build. 1. Inspect the page and retrieve a user ID 2. Make a call to the /username API endpoint to request access to the GitHub repo for <github_username> Back then, each user could send invites to the repo 3 times (in case you make a typo or change your GH account) 150 profiles on the leaderboard + 0 to 2 invites left per account = up to 300 invites. People who did that are smart because they sent the invites to big Twitter accounts so they would RT and spread the word. Now my tweets have a bigger reach, I can't make tradeoffs like I used to. So each startup has a paywall + login required.