I don't care about their data. But I do care about them and I would like to see people who care about the app which will try to solve some problem of them. I would like to have a passionate user base(100s) rather than collecting 1000s of emails. I would like to talk with them, one by one and ask them if we can help them.
Some people told me there are similar tools, some asked me questions, some shared their love and interest to use the app. Some said "Landing page sucks" which I agree a lot! Some asked for a job.. I wouldn't get this if I was only asking their email address.
173 people even wrote something to remarks. Only 60 people did not write their names ( some of them did not write their names but put some remarks )
448 people filled out their name. Only 1 of them has name-surname "In Valid" and his email address is avalid@email.com I bet he is a bot.
First name - Last name fields are not required. People who follow Hacker News are already experienced Web users who knows clearly a sign of Required Field, they might easily skip it, but they did not. The rest of the emails are already indicating their name and surname.
If they don't care and they don't request an invite; which means I would be more efficiently spend my time.
It might have a better conversion rate without asking their name, but I don't care about the conversion rate that much.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against what you say, I am trying to rationalize the behavior with data.