Why Robin Will Always Be Free

I get asked this a lot, usually with a slightly suspicious tone: what's the catch?

Fair question. Software costs money to run, and "free" usually means you're the product. So here's the actual reasoning, plainly.

The world needs more good coaches

I'm not a coach myself - I'm a software engineer. I've benefited from coaching and therapy in my own life, and I'd been coaching other engineers informally, at work and outside it. Building Robin meant meeting a lot of people training to do it properly, and what struck me was how expensive the path already is. A decent coaching qualification costs somewhere between £4,000 and £17,000, and most people do it mid-career, alongside a full-time job, often as part of changing their life direction entirely.

I've been through a version of that journey. It takes real nerve to retrain at 40 or 50.

And then, after all that money and nerve, there's a gap nobody warned you about: your credential requires a hundred or more hours of actual coaching, and no one hands you the people to practise with. The training is paid for. The practice isn't provided.

I don't think the practice gap should be another toll booth on that road. The world needs more good coaches, mentors and guides - and the people willing to become them have paid enough by the time they reach Robin.

There's a personal version of this too. Tech has been good to me, and I've had coaching and therapy make a real difference in my own life. Robin is how I give something back. The meeting, connecting, and practising together - that part is the gift, and you don't charge for a gift.

Free also happens to be the right strategy

I'll be honest that this isn't only idealism. Robin is a community of coaches practising with each other, and communities like this only work when everyone can be in the pool. Put the matching behind a paywall and the pool shrinks, matches get worse for everyone, and the whole thing unwinds. Free isn't a promotional phase - it's structural.

So when I say free, I mean the actual product: finding practice partners, messaging, scheduling, video calls, your logbook, transcripts, the community. That's Robin, and it stays free.

What about money, then?

At some point Robin will offer paid extras for coaches who want them - things layered on top, for people who choose them. What I won't do is take something free away and sell it back to you, or quietly degrade the free product to make the paid one look better. If the free version has to get worse for the business to work, the business doesn't deserve to work.

That's the whole answer. No catch, just a strong opinion about where the barriers to this profession should be - and where they shouldn't.

If you're building your hours, Robin is free. It'll stay that way.

Jon