
Don’t bite the shit sandwich - fadr
http://unicornfree.com/2010/dont-bite-the-shit-sandwich/
======
lsc
hah. I love it. Now, personally, I don't have a problem with 'free' but I do
think that 'free' goes more with "I'm doing this because I think it's fun"
than "I'm doing this so I can get rich." - I think most of the problems you
see with 'free' happen when you try to get rich off your free product, rather
than just trying to create a good product that happens do be free. Craigslist
is an excellent example. I mean, craig did get rich, by my standards, anyhow,
but he's careful not to overdo it. He could probably become rich by global
standards by selling craigslist to someone who would spam it up facebook or
myspace style, but he didn't. even now, he focuses on making the free product
good.

That's the other side of 'free' - infrastructure is super cheap these days. If
you build it because you think it is awesome, there's usually no need to get
VC to rent servers.

Really, though, if you want to make money rather than just cover your costs,
charging money for what you provide is the obvious choice.

My personal goal is to have a conventional 'charge money for goods and
services' business that is successful enough to support me and my crew while
we work on a few free 'because I think it would be awesome' boondogles,
because that sort of thing is a lot of fun, you know?

~~~
ahoyhere
Oh, totally. I only have a beef with "free" as business advice!

If you just wanna have fun, don't twist yourself into a pretzel trying to
"monetize."

EDIT: Clarity!

~~~
wgj
BTW, <http://everytimezone.com/> rocks! I've been using it quite a bit. Great
work, hugely useful, free, and no pretzels.

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lidmith
Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that
people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others.
Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your
customer" is a real problem for such services.

Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock
installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not to be
dismissed.

~~~
edanm
Gmail could probably cost money and have a big userbase (at least now, when so
many people know about it and use it).

But I think a lot of the community sites _can't_ charge money. I don't see
Twitter, Reddit, StackOverflow and other such community sites gaining nearly
enough users that way.

~~~
skorgu
Stack Overflow is explicitly a rebellion against Expertsexchange which has a
free option with lots of upsell.

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cookiecaper
There's a place for free, but I agree that those who start businesses and then
have to come up with a plan to generate money are doing things completely
backwards. It's one of the reasons I am annoyed at Twitter; they should be
shunned for starting this thing with millions of dollars of other peoples'
money and ultimately having no idea how they're ever going to make any of it
back, but instead they get played up like crazy.

You've made this point in your comments, but offering a significant amount of
content or software for free can be considered advertising for your paid
product, and is practically essential for survival on the web anyway. Paywalls
are last century; people want to be handed things now, and if you hand them
things and give some slight nudges toward a premium account for extra features
or whatever, that works fine, they just don't want to expect to be told
anymore "$30 before you get to play". And honestly that's never been a good
strategy, and it's even worse online, because it stops word-of-mouth, it stops
search engines or other interested parties from indexing or trying your
product, and just generally greatly reduces visibility.

Freemium is the way to go. There is no shame in charging for a good product,
but keeping things under lock and key is not ideal either. You want to provide
maximal "viral" potential, which is accomplished by making the bulk of the
product freely available and accessible, and you also want to make sure you
get paid in a good number of cases, which is accomplished by operating your
free product correctly.

~~~
_delirium
It's not like Twitter started it with millions of dollars of other people's
money without those people's consent, though. VCs have been practically
begging to throw money at them! So it seems like the people whose money it is
are 100% on board with spending their own money...

~~~
zeemonkee
Perhaps these investors view Twitter as a useful service, that happens to help
their own business in some way. Rather than see it as a direct investment,
they see Twitter as a public utility they are willing to pay for.

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kixxauth
I buy all the Unicornfree ideology here. But I can't help but begin to think
that I reject shit sandwiches simply because the shit sandwich makers reject
me. By the way, I also eat up all the preaching that comes out of 37Signals. I
love that stuff. I love being an underdog. But, is it an inferiority complex?

I have my own thoughts on this:
[http://fireworksfactory.blogspot.com/2010/05/hacking-on-
dyna...](http://fireworksfactory.blogspot.com/2010/05/hacking-on-dynamic-
capitalism.html)

~~~
ahoyhere
That's a really good point. I read most of your essay, and you're probably
going to hate me for this, but… all that effort you put into engineering a new
type of business, why didn't you use that energy for building a product you
can charge for?

I don't agree with "always work on your best idea." My philosophy is "always
work on the your best idea that is the nexus of being fun and earning you
money soonest."

That's why my first SaaS is a time tracker, and not the giant perfect project
management suite that lives on in my daydreams.

And the best reason to avoid VC is not so you can feel like an underdog, but
because A) it's often a pyrrhic victory, and B) you add one more cook to the
kitchen. I hate anyone telling me what to do. A VC is a client, in another
form.

~~~
raganwald
> A VC is a client, in another form.

Only, clients give you money that you can use in any way you see fit: Grow
your business, buy a West Coast Freeride bike, save it for a rainy day.

VCs put money in your business and then take your business for themselves and
decide how to spend their money. It was never yours and never will be. If you
wind up getting a big, big payday, you might get some of that money. But
you'll never get a penny from the VC.

Thus, I would say that while there are excellent reasons to do business with a
VC, if we are comparing them to clients I would say they are more demanding
than clients while paradoxically giving you no money at all.

~~~
ahoyhere
I was thinking of it purely in terms of decision-making -- if you are only
bootstrapping, you are free to serve your customers to the best of your
ability, and shape your business how you choose. I have seen many friends
forced to compromise because their VC demanded it. (And not the everybody-
learns-and-grows type of compromise.)

But you really pounded the financial nail into the coffin there :)

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Tichy
I like free web sites. If companies somehow can pull that off, more power to
them.

