Same here. I was keen to see the functionality first. Encountering a sign-up form as the first step is an instant closing of the tab for me.
What benefit do you get from that?
Are you going to send me an email reminding me to try it again? That’s going straight to spam.
If I like the product-at some point I’ll have to sign up, and then you have my email.
Why the intermediate step? The only thing that comes to mind is limiting resource usage? If it’s just free people might use it just to use it-but isn’t that kind of the point of a demo?