Comments on: TWIS#10 Freemium Special with Lincoln Murphy- This Week in SaaS

By: Justin Pirie

Justin Pirie — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:09:38 +0000

I agree- but I guess that's why they're buying Lincoln's talent…

Personally, I'm a practitioner of Lean Startup and Customer Development methodologies which avert the need for these problems if done properly… If the product / market fit is good then you shouldn't have to give it away for free. Just like Marc Andressen calls it “market pull”.

By: daintree

daintree — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:12:02 +0000

Great interview, important topic.

Reflecting on this interview and the paper I sense that the 'sample set' of product startups must operate without substantial input from business end-users and buyers… Surely, the start-up's alpha and beta users can provide feedback not only on product features but also on questions of sales and marketing strategy.

By: Justin Pirie

Justin Pirie — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:20:32 +0000

Genius quote! I'm going to store that one up to use another day…

When are we going to have our pricing kabal???

By: Rags Srinivasan

Rags Srinivasan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:17:51 +0000

Keynes said,”Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”, customers can stay happy with the free version longer than a freemium startup can stay solvent.

By: Justin Pirie

Justin Pirie — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:38:04 +0000

Thanks. I'm not so sure about another dot com bubble though- freemium companies can happily go out of business all on their own!

By: Andy Wright

Andy Wright — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:41:26 +0000

Thanks for such an excellent interview!, I'm looking forward to reading the other blog posts on Freemium.

My favourite quote: “Sure, now they have only half of the pie, but in the long run it will likely be a pie that actually gets out of the oven and makes some money!” — that one was completely priceless

By: markstonham

markstonham — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:35:03 +0000

Excellent interview and assessment from Lincoln Murphy. We risk a second dot com bubble if Freemium is the business model. And user organisations need to do a risk assessment in case an application they increasingly rely on starts to get flaky. Back-up strategy? Disaster recovery? PS. Is it just me experiencing capacity problems on Twitter this week?