Finally a hands-on perspective that will help startups.
Just curious: when you launched Superhuman, did you directly start with a paid tier instead of free trial/freemium? If yes, what factors gave you the confidence that it would work?
Technically speaking the first 10-15 people onboarded were free (friends+family, mostly for QA/bug finding) but when we got to who we considered 'real' customers, we swiftly shifted into "paid only" mode (taking payment details at the start of the onboarding)
Confidence that it would work: a strategic bet that the business would ONLY work if we took payment up front, delivered the best product, and differentiated from Gmail/Outlook. We also noticed that customers took Superhuman way more seriously when we took payment so we kept doing it. A combination of logical reasoning plus intuitively feeling it out in realtime.
So taking payment pushed you to make a far more superior product based on user signals rather than you building a product in an office and then charging people money (which they probably wouldn't have even paid).
Sensible in principle, gutsy in action. Most founders would shy away from it.
Finally a hands-on perspective that will help startups.
Just curious: when you launched Superhuman, did you directly start with a paid tier instead of free trial/freemium? If yes, what factors gave you the confidence that it would work?
Technically speaking the first 10-15 people onboarded were free (friends+family, mostly for QA/bug finding) but when we got to who we considered 'real' customers, we swiftly shifted into "paid only" mode (taking payment details at the start of the onboarding)
Confidence that it would work: a strategic bet that the business would ONLY work if we took payment up front, delivered the best product, and differentiated from Gmail/Outlook. We also noticed that customers took Superhuman way more seriously when we took payment so we kept doing it. A combination of logical reasoning plus intuitively feeling it out in realtime.
So taking payment pushed you to make a far more superior product based on user signals rather than you building a product in an office and then charging people money (which they probably wouldn't have even paid).
Sensible in principle, gutsy in action. Most founders would shy away from it.
Exactly this 🎯
Once you realize you can count Freemium as a marketing expense to grow your audience - it makes so much more sense
🔥