The Startup Chat With Steli And Hiten

Welcome to another episode of The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten. This week we’re talking about the pros and cons of the Freemium pricing model in startups.    This Week’s Updates: Steli is getting ready to go on a 6 week trip to Europe.  Planning how to get stuff done on the trip and stay productive. Hiten is working on moving on from KISSmetrics and focusing on building out new software for Crazy Egg.  In this transition he’s seeing the benefit of using chat products like Slack instead of email. Today’s Topic:  Freemium Hiten says you must start a SaaS product with a free offering.  Steli doesn’t agree, and that’s why Close.io does not have a free pricing model. In the B2B space it’s important to set the expectation of paying up front instead of allowing users in the door without charging.  Unless you’re a massive scale product like Dropbox or Evernote it just doesn’t help move the business along. However, if you are thoughtful about free products, and don’t just throw something together this can be a su