Rusenko: 2008 Silicon Valley consensus was to actively avoid charging users
David Rusenko · David Rusenko - How To Find Product Market Fit · Y Combinator · Sep 5, 2018 · at 47:19
David Rusenko, co-founder of Weebly, describes the startup pricing mindset during Weebly's early years at Y Combinator Startup School.
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“In 2007 and 2008, the prevailing thinking in Silicon Valley was that you should actively not charge money. You should actively be not making money. That was the prevailing thinking. It sounds really, really crazy now. But at the time, the logic went that Twitter was the example. That if you charged money, then you would have revenues, and once you had revenues, they wouldn't be that big, and then you'd just be valued on a multiple of your revenues, so way better to sell the dream and not show any revenues than to make money and then have your valuation come down.”
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