You probably had to answer questions during their closed beta, so they could look for and invite specific user types as they ramped up. As of last week, IIRC, they're now in open beta. That could explain why their sign up flow changed.

Makes sense. I wasn't mad about it or anything, just noticed that it had that effect on me, and was like, "huh, weird". The three or four times I'd thought about going back, remembering that was there had stopped me, too ("eh, I don't want to get started and just end up abandoning it again, waste of time") until checking again after reading this thread.