Best first impressions for newcomers [v4]

I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.

This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks.

The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately.