Tally smiled. “The catch is that you must accept my bridge for what it is: not a conversation, but a census. My questions will appear all at once, or in long scrollable sections. You won’t get floating animations or GIF backgrounds. My font is Helvetica. My color palette is what you make of it. I will not whisper sweet nothings to each user. But I will carry every single one of them—even the 10,000th—across the river, without asking for a coin.”

“All free. All unlimited.”

Once, in the sprawling digital kingdom of Formica, there lived two master builders: and Typeform.

bowed his head. “My art is not for everyone,” he admitted. “It is for the perfect moment, the perfect budget, the perfect user. I cannot serve the masses if the masses refuse to pay the toll.”

“File uploads? Video? Calculations?”

“But… how many people will answer?” asked the treasurer, still pale.

But then, the cracks appeared.