[smoyer]

"As a distributed team with no overhead, Helpful has the luxury of being able charge nothing — and if they can get mass distribution it won’t be hard to find channels of monetization."

Haven't they been paying attention to all the venture-funded teams that do reach mass distribution but are shuttered because they can't find a way to be profitable? Even a distributed team has overhead ... the team members are covering it instead of the company. And eventually they'll want (deserve) at least a salary.

[awwstn2]

The goal is definitely to monetize -- the point is that they don't need to rush to monetize, so they can focus on growth right now.

If Helpful charged $x/mo and competed with other support tools on features and pricing, it could grow into a decent business. If it's a totally free, community owned (meaning customers can get involved in product direction) competitor to those existing companies, it has a much easier path to being a market leader. Once a product like this has huge distribution, the options for monetizing are plenty. (Build a marketplace of add ons, charge for premium features, etc)

[smoyer]

I understood what the article said ... I was warning that this thinking hasn't worked out so well for some companies. In this case I'll admit that having (successful) paid competitors at least indicates there's a market that will pay (and in theory recognizes the value of this service vertical).