Freemium wireless internet startup FreedomPop has been out to undercut traditional wireless carriers on data plan costs for over a year now, but now the company wants to up ante once more. In exchange for a recurring monthly fee of $0, users of the company’s forthcoming phone service will be able to get 500MB of wireless data access, 200 voice minutes, and unlimited messaging starting later this… → Read More
The freemium kids’ app party that has seen some parents left with hefty bills because of their kids’ use of games could be heading for a sticky end — at least in the U.K. The Office of Fair Trading has announced a six-month investigation into whether children are being “unfairly pressured or encouraged to pay for additional content in ‘free’ web and app-based games”. → Read More
Editor’s note: Jules Maltz is a general partner at IVP. Daniel Barney is a senior associate at IVP.
For some, freemium is a business model that sacrifices revenues and forces startups to support freeloaders who will never become paying customers. For others, it is the logical conclusion of a world in which the cost of bandwidth, storage, and information processing approaches zero. → Read More
It’s been nearly a year since a company called FreedomPop announced its intentions (through a cryptically ambitious press release, no less) that it planned to bring “free broadband” to data-hungry users nationwide. The early FreedomPop site didn’t inspire much confidence, but it wasn’t long before the team’s practical vision came to light.
Put simply, users would get 500MB of free… → Read More
The idea of offering your product or a version of it for free has been a source of much debate.
Pricing is always tricky. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t give it enough thought. They will often copy the pricing strategy of similar products, base their decisions on pompous statements made by “experts” or rely on broken rationale (we worked hard so we should charge $X).
Free is even… → Read More
With the continued success of Twitter and other social networking tools, any criticism (or praise) of products and companies is becoming increasingly public. Finding a way to manage these external communications in the internal decision-making process is an ongoing challenge for many businesses. Today, in an effort to help marketers and community managers better deal with such outside… → Read More
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