# Building A Free Cortex  | Cortex

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/156586
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:156586
- Published at: 2022-07-13 15:41:55 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-16 13:53:48 UTC

## Author
Brennan White

## Subject
Cortex

## Content
Hello Fam! I hope everyone's Q2 was delightful. It's been a very fun one for us at Cortex and we have a big update that we're excited to be able to share a bit about today.The MissionSince Day 1 the mission of Cortex has been to "unlock the power of the world's creatives." Every day, that mission is what keeps the Cortex Team working passionately and at a high level. The world needs what we have built and we're working like crazy to make it available to everyone.The Limiting FactorOne thing that has stood in the way of EVERY creative benefitting from Cortex is the cost. Many of the world's creatives, even at the largest companies in the world, are unwilling or unable to try something new if there is a cost associated with it. Yet, traditionally, Cortex costs a decent amount of money to run, so we HAD to charge for our services and therefore a significant group of potential Cortex users were out of our reach... ...that's why, this announcement is particularly exciting. The SolutionOver the past months, the Cortex Team worked extra hard to dramatically reduce the costs to run Cortex. That means that today, we're announcing that the Cortex Team will be kicking off a hackathon to finalize our FREEMIUM version of Cortex. This means, if the team is successful, in a matter of weeks, there will be a completely-free tier of Cortex. Most importantly that means every single creative worker in the world will be a potential user of Cortex. If successful, Cortex can now begin to truly execute against our vision of unlocking the power of the world's creatives.And selfishly, we have a hunch that the more creatives that use and love Cortex, the more paid subscriptions of Cortex we'll sell. :) Specific hypotheses we're testing with Freemium assuming a successful hackathon and launch:We hypothesize that a free version will increase our MAUs (monthly active users) by over 5% in the first month.We hypothesize that a free version will increase the rate of user activation (new users successfully becoming MAUs) by over 50% in the first monthWe hypothesize that this might initially lower our percentage of users spending 30+ min in the software (a bad thing), but that this number will bounce back as we focus on reengagement campaigns later in the quarter.Stay tuned for more on that to hold us accountable to the hypotheses. Assuming the hackathon and launch goes off without a hitch, I'll be asking you to share Cortex Freemium with people in your lives. Please stay tuned to the next few updates if you want to help your investment in Cortex grow.In the coming weeks, you'll hear from me a few more times about the progress on launching Freemium, our upcoming fundraise, how YOU can help spread the word to the creatives of the world, and more. Photo by Fahim Muntashir on Unsplash