

The story of a product built entirely in public - awwstn2
https://medium.com/@awwstn/a-product-built-in-public-b2937fb54f1d#####

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robbintt
What is the deal with the site behind this advertisement/article? Assembly
seems to have some pretty restrictive and controlling terms, paired with a
feel good video. IMO they are trying to bottle up a genie.

[https://assembly.com/terms](https://assembly.com/terms)

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smoyer
"As a distributed team with no overhead, Helpful has the luxury of being able
charge nothing — and if they can get mass distribution it won’t be hard to
find channels of monetization."

Haven't they been paying attention to all the venture-funded teams that do
reach mass distribution but are shuttered because they can't find a way to be
profitable? Even a distributed team has overhead ... the team members are
covering it instead of the company. And eventually they'll want (deserve) at
least a salary.

~~~
awwstn2
The goal is definitely to monetize -- the point is that they don't need to
rush to monetize, so they can focus on growth right now.

If Helpful charged $x/mo and competed with other support tools on features and
pricing, it could grow into a decent business. If it's a totally free,
community owned (meaning customers can get involved in product direction)
competitor to those existing companies, it has a much easier path to being a
market leader. Once a product like this has huge distribution, the options for
monetizing are plenty. (Build a marketplace of add ons, charge for premium
features, etc)

~~~
smoyer
I understood what the article said ... I was warning that this thinking hasn't
worked out so well for some companies. In this case I'll admit that having
(successful) paid competitors at least indicates there's a market that will
pay (and in theory recognizes the value of this service vertical).

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CCentreal
[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-
source_intelligence](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence)
needs a creative commons cense remix?

