Rahul C. (owner) asked me to complete a design exercise. I spend significant time coming up with a design solution & creating an interactive prototype. His response was that I created a beautiful design but he didn't think it would increase conversion. A design exercise is meant to demonstrate the capabilities of a designer not provide a company with a complete design solution that solves for a long standing design problem they've been struggling to resolve. Instaread has already been reported on Glassdoor for using a fake job opportunity to solicit free design solutions in the form of a design exercise.