Dharmesh Shah and how not to give your software away for free

clipped from onstartups.com If you are a startup entrepreneur, at some point, you will need to make a decision regarding your business model. Many software startups have a strategy to build early market traction by giving away their offering for free with some plan to monetize at a later date. I'm not going to make a strong argument against this. So, for purposes of this article, lets assume for a moment that as a software startup, you actually *want* to charge money for your software someday. For some background on the issue of pricing models, I suggest my previous article: Startup Pricing Models: Free Forever, Freemium and Freedom To Pay