The following is my recent post on the VentureFizz Blog
It usually starts with someone’s bright idea: “We need to disrupt this market…fast. How about we just give away our product. It will go viral and kill .”
In theory it sounds great. It’s such a simple way to kick your mortal enemy in their revenue stream by giving away your product for free.
In my world, there are many examples like Solarwinds and Splunk, where the free products were key awareness builders and growth drivers. It seems pretty straightforward… however, launching and growing a free product is hard work and the “overnight sensations” are often high-profile exceptions rather than the rule. Over the past 10 years I’ve marketed a number of different free offerings and here some things that I have learned:
