Hey HN, Bobby here, ceo of equals (equals.com). In the spirit of being open and sharing learnings with the community, wanted to share one of the riskiest changes I made to our business (almost broke it). There's such a pull in the startup ecosystem to have a free version of your product, to minimize friction in onboarding, to get as many people using your product as possible, and to figure out how to monetize later. I followed that thought process and it almost wrecked our business. Here's a pretty open view into our attempt at freemium, why it didn't work, and what we learned from it. Hope it's helpful and relevant.

Super interesting, thanks for sharing! Two questions:

1. It looks like ARR dropped significantly when the freemium product launched - was that because existing paid customers were downgrading to Free and continuing to use the product?

2. When killing the Free plan, did Equals also go back to a higher touch onboarding for new customers?

How about having a free version that is size-limited? Or did you have that?

I'm wondering why it happened the way you describe? Was the free version perhaps too good?

Or is there simple psychology at play where people perceive something as having more value when they have to pay for it?

If something is given out for free it looks like they are giving it away because they can't find paying customers?

I assume free is good for non-professional customers but those will never pay because they don't REALLY need your product. Professionals know they get what they pay for and are willing to pay it because it will help their business?