

Radicals and Visionaries: Chris Anderson vs. 37Signals - danielzarick
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/october/203404.html

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danielzarick
Interesting how 37Signals is painted so well in this piece, and Chris Anderson
only sounds like a lost child babbling about the internet. Personally, I find
the arguments in 'Free' to be valuable to anybody that reads HN, but they
should only be viewed as supplement to what we already know. 'Free' is not a
business plan, and very few companies can pull it off in any purposeful way.

Mint does it well because they have an incredibly focused and niche market. If
you are on their site, you are trying to be financially responsible, and your
bank/debit/credit are all fundamentally attached to your account. Google did
it well because they knew there was a huge well of oil waiting for them, they
simply had to tap it right. Users often go to Google/search engines with the
'intent to buy', and this is where Facebook and Twitter fall short. It is
consequentially rare that I am scouring my friends'/followers' pages on social
networks with any intent to spend money.

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sachinag
Let's be clear: Facebook is cash flow positive entirely on advertisements.

No one is right about everything, all the time, in all circumstances. This is
why we even _have_ business schools. You learn about a ton of options in a ton
of situations and your job as a manager is to make the best call you can and
try to execute to a good result.

Why would picking a business model be any different than deciding what
framework/language/database/etc. to use?

~~~
nir
But Facebook, with >300m users, is an edge case. It's a business model in the
same way getting into acting in order to become as rich as Tom Cruise is a
business model.

37Signals model of charging for a service, on the other hand, can at least
appear reasonably replicable (though also much harder than it seems, if you
don't have Fried's natural talent for marketing & PR)

~~~
danielzarick
You are 100% correct. This is what I was trying to say, but a lot shorter and
more eloquently put. Thank you.

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adrinavarro
Freemium is a nice concept for me. Let's take two examples, Flickr and
Dropbox.

I'm a heavy Flickr user, and their premium account is cheap, worth the price
for me, and still a good deal for them. They still make money!

Let's talk about Dropbox. In fact, I don't use premium with them (I'd love to
have a yearly 10GB plan for 30$ or 40$, but they just don't have it). I don't
exceed more than 1GB used, and that's not a big spending for them. But I do
attract some friends to their awesome service, and why not, some heavy users
(did someone mention my dad?).

Free means satisfied users and word of mouth advertising, which is really
underrated. And premium means money. Just make it worth the price, and "paint"
a clear line between what's fair using free and what's worth paying.

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ZeroGravitas
Pop Quiz. Whose website is this quote from:

 _"Read it free online

Absolutely free.

The complete book. 16 chapters and 91 essays.

Completely free to read online."_

<http://bit.ly/the_answer_is>

~~~
tom_rath
Except they're not giving their product away for free, they're only offering
complimentary 'Kool Aid'.

~~~
davidw
They charged $20 for their pdf for a while, though, before they made it free.
And it was never even a "real book" that you could buy in stores, with its
very own ISBN, and all that.

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tptacek
And from what I remember, they made a ludicrous amount of money on that PDF.

