Case Studies in Freemium: Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic and MailChimp: Tech News and Analysis « Don’t spend money on marketing, do offer flexibility and data exporting to eliminate buyers’ regret, make sure to capitalize on and value goodwill, and only charge for things that are hard to do.
That’s what some startups say is the key to success in the freemium business. But the biggest reason the five presenters this morning at the Freemium Summit in San Francisco — Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic (see disclosure at the bottom) and MailChimp — are doing well is because they have great products that people want. They’ve been able to get those products to a broad audience by using the freemium model — that is, offering a free service with the option to upgrade. It’s an increasingly important business model, but one that’s hard to navigate, so their anecdotes, open sharing of data, and lessons learned were really valuable. The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century. HBS Working Knowledge recently celebrated its tenth birthday, and we mark the occasion by looking back and looking forward.
We've asked HBS Dean Nitin Nohria and a number of faculty to both remark on what they view as the most significant business management ideas of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and then to tell us what they hope will be the most fertile areas of business research between now and 2020. But we didn't leave it there. Professor Jim Heskett is moderating a similar discussion with HBS Working Knowledge readers, and we encourage you to participate.
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