Freemium

A Next Big Idea Club "Must Read" for August 2025!

  Competing in tech today requires an understanding of "product-led growth"

  Companies like Dropbox, Zoom, Slack, Atlassian, and DocuSign grew into multibillion-dollar companies using the 3-step "Freemium" product strategy: (1) instead of hiring an expensive sales force, give away software for free; (2) let happy users tell others; (3) offer a premium subscription version, producing a recurring revenue stream. Over the last three decades, Freemium strategy has evolved into a practice known to tech industry insiders as "product-led growth," which Harvard Business School Lecturer Frank Cespedes calls, "probably the fastest-growing go-to-market model for businesses globally."

  Freemium is the authoritative guide to product-led growth, written by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Harvard MBA Dave Boyce, who teaches the first MBA-level course on the topic. Freemium explains how to develop a product that can sell itself, how to ward off competitors, and how to seamlessly move upmarket, selling to larger customers. It details how the product itself (instead of expensive employees) can be used for customer onboarding, customer service, and customer retention. Freemium also details how non-software companies and enterprise sales-led companies are combining product-led growth tactics with more traditional go-to-market initiatives.

  Competing in nearly every tech-related industry today requires an understanding of the principles of product-led growth. Freemium is the comprehensive, practical handbook for this unicorn-building strategy.