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Startup Archive
Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky on why you should make your product free
After the dot com crash, Joel read a blog post by Ev Williams titled “The End of Free.” As Joel explains, the blog post argued that software was no longer going to be free:
“He was like: ‘I would rather have a company with 400 customers paying me $10 a month so that I can eat stuff than 400,000 customers that don’t pay me anything and I can’t eat stuff.’… That was very influential at the time, and we were like: ‘Yeah! We’re always going to charge for all the things.’”
At the time Joel was building a remote tech support product called Copilot:
“We were very much of this ‘end of free’ mentality. So we were like: ‘And it’s 5 bucks! That’s a good price for helping somebody fix their computer’.”
But Joel believes this was a fatal mistake:
“What we should have done is made it free and then figured out how to pay for it later, which would have been to go to professional tech support departments and sell them the advanced version that lets them run a team of 1,000 tech support people… And sell it to them for a million dollars. But get the marketing from the free product.”
He did not make the same mistake when he founded Trello (acquired for $425M):
“I think in 2000 I would’ve made that mistake again. I would’ve been like ‘Hey it’s software like Microsoft Word. It’s $20 a month or whatever.’ But what we said was we want a hundred million people to eventually use Trello, of whom the 1% that gets the most value out of it pays us $100 a year. Then it’s a $100M business and it’s worth $1 billion and we’re done.”
As Joel explains:
“99% of the people are just going to get it for free, but when you focus on the 1% that find it most useful, they will pay you. They will pay for added features and they will pay you anything you want because they’re making money off of it.”
He gives an example of Deutsche Bank making a billion dollars a day selling derivatives - they would pay almost anything for Microsoft Excel because it’s essential to that massive business.
Video source: @twistartups @jason (2019)
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Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky on why you should make your product free
After the dot com crash, Joel read a blog post by Ev Williams titled “The End of Free.” As Joel explains, the blog post argued that software was no longer going to be free:
“He was like: ‘I would rather have a company with 400 customers paying me $10 a month so that I can eat stuff than 400,000 customers that don’t pay me anything and I can’t eat stuff.’… That was very influential at the time, and we were like: ‘Yeah! We’re always going to charge for all the things.’”
At the time Joel was building a remote tech support product called Copilot:
“We were very much of this ‘end of free’ mentality. So we were like: ‘And it’s 5 bucks! That’s a good price for helping somebody fix their computer’.”
But Joel believes this was a fatal mistake:
“What we should have done is made it free and then figured out how to pay for it later, which would have been to go to professional tech support departments and sell them the advanced version that lets them run a team of 1,000 tech support people… And sell it to them for a million dollars. But get the marketing from the free product.”
He did not make the same mistake when he founded Trello (acquired for $425M):
“I think in 2000 I would’ve made that mistake again. I would’ve been like ‘Hey it’s software like Microsoft Word. It’s $20 a month or whatever.’ But what we said was we want a hundred million people to eventually use Trello, of whom the 1% that gets the most value out of it pays us $100 a year. Then it’s a $100M business and it’s worth $1 billion and we’re done.”
As Joel explains:
“99% of the people are just going to get it for free, but when you focus on the 1% that find it most useful, they will pay you. They will pay for added features and they will pay you anything you want because they’re making money off of it.”
He gives an example of Deutsche Bank making a billion dollars a day selling derivatives - they would pay almost anything for Microsoft Excel because it’s essential to that massive business.
Video source: @twistartups @jason (2019)
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Stock Analysis Compilation
Perritt CM on Alico $ALCO US
Thesis: Alico is monetizing non-core land assets and capitalizing on strategic growth in citrus production and real estate value.
(Extract from their article) https://t.co/cC9ySKSuu7
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Perritt CM on Alico $ALCO US
Thesis: Alico is monetizing non-core land assets and capitalizing on strategic growth in citrus production and real estate value.
(Extract from their article) https://t.co/cC9ySKSuu7
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Stock Analysis Compilation
Royce IP on FormFactor $FORM US
Thesis: FormFactor is capitalizing on the demand for next-gen chips with its leading probe card solutions and resilient revenue base.
(Extract from their article) https://t.co/lVZCCh5KnW
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Royce IP on FormFactor $FORM US
Thesis: FormFactor is capitalizing on the demand for next-gen chips with its leading probe card solutions and resilient revenue base.
(Extract from their article) https://t.co/lVZCCh5KnW
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Startup Archive
RT @foundertribune: "Analogies Give Customers Superpowers" by @tfadell https://t.co/T0PmJJKf2a
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RT @foundertribune: "Analogies Give Customers Superpowers" by @tfadell https://t.co/T0PmJJKf2a
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Startup Archive
"[Steve Jobs would] always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful."
- Tony Fadell
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"[Steve Jobs would] always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful."
- Tony Fadell
"Analogies Give Customers Superpowers" by @tfadell https://t.co/T0PmJJKf2a tweet
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InsideArbitrage
RT @AsifSuria: Thrilled to see that @MoneyWeek magazine picked The Event-Driven Edge in Investing as one of their best investment books of 2024!
The most accurate review of the book was the one left on the Audible version. After reading Richer, Wiser, Happier by @WilliamGreen72 I realized how much flare I was missing in my writing.
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RT @AsifSuria: Thrilled to see that @MoneyWeek magazine picked The Event-Driven Edge in Investing as one of their best investment books of 2024!
The most accurate review of the book was the one left on the Audible version. After reading Richer, Wiser, Happier by @WilliamGreen72 I realized how much flare I was missing in my writing.
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Stock Analysis Compilation
Heartland Advisors on Centrus Energy $LEU US
Thesis: Centrus Energy’s unique position as a licensed uranium supplier and its strong balance sheet support its potential for long-term growth in clean energy
(Extract from their Q3 letter) https://t.co/l4k46USwqE
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Heartland Advisors on Centrus Energy $LEU US
Thesis: Centrus Energy’s unique position as a licensed uranium supplier and its strong balance sheet support its potential for long-term growth in clean energy
(Extract from their Q3 letter) https://t.co/l4k46USwqE
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Startup Archive
RT @lulumeservey: The most basic skill of every great founder is convincing people to care
“You are going to be convincing employees to join you. You’re going to be convincing investors to invest in you. When you get to the point where you’re doing deals with bigger companies, you have to convince them. Your whole world is convincing people, and so you have to be able to communicate your idea and convince people why they should care about you more than any of the other hundreds of startups out there.”
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RT @lulumeservey: The most basic skill of every great founder is convincing people to care
“You are going to be convincing employees to join you. You’re going to be convincing investors to invest in you. When you get to the point where you’re doing deals with bigger companies, you have to convince them. Your whole world is convincing people, and so you have to be able to communicate your idea and convince people why they should care about you more than any of the other hundreds of startups out there.”
Jessica Livingston on investing in Stripe when the Collison Brothers were teenagers
Jessica reflects on a 19-year old Patrick Collison telling her and the other co-founders of Y Combinator that he wanted to take on the financial industry with his younger brother John.
“We were like, ‘Do you realize how hard this is? And you don’t have connections.’ But they were intrepid. They were like, ‘Well, we don’t have connections, but we’ll find connections.’”
She recalls their determination and focus:
“You think the head of a bank is going to take a 19-year old startup founder seriously? It seems pretty implausible, right? But they were good enough that they were able to convince these banks to work with them.”
Determination, Jessica argues, is “by far the most important quality. More than intelligence. More than previous success in school.” When she co-founded Y Combinator, the hypothesis was that they’d just fund all the best hackers from MIT and Harvard and they’d turn out to be great startup founders. But that turned out to not be true.
“Determination is the most important thing. Understanding your users and building a product with a great user experience is second most important.”
Jessica also believes being flexible minded is very important:
“You have this idea, you test it out, and it doesn’t always work the first time. You have to be able to say, ‘Okay, I thought I was going to do this, but let’s try this, even though I have a lot of energy vested in this, let’s try this direction. You really have to be open minded.”
And then you have to be convincing and a good leader:
“You are going to be convincing employees to join you. You’re going to be convincing investors to invest in you. When you get to the point where you’re doing deals with bigger companies, you have to convince them. Your whole world is convincing people, and so you have to be able to communicate your idea and convince people why they should care about you more than any of the other hundreds of startups out there.”
Video source: @ycombinator (2016) tweet
Quiver Quantitative
RT @InsiderRadar: 🚨BREAKING: New Insider Purchase
A director of $NKE has reported the purchase of ~$191K of the company's stock, increasing his ownership stake by 9%.
This is the first insider buy we have seen from this director in over 2 years.
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RT @InsiderRadar: 🚨BREAKING: New Insider Purchase
A director of $NKE has reported the purchase of ~$191K of the company's stock, increasing his ownership stake by 9%.
This is the first insider buy we have seen from this director in over 2 years.
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