5 Goals Your Startup’s Free Trial Must Achieve

Don’t just give your product away blindly, make those trails lead to revenue

There’s a lot of misunderstanding around free trialing, the “try before you buy” approach to finding product-market fit. I’ve been running and advising dozens of startups over the past 20 years, and I’ve seen the free trial model produce tremendous results — and also crippling mistakes.

On one hand, a free trial can be an indispensable method for getting customers to accept a new paradigm that’s 180 degrees from the traditional market offering.

For example, when Netflix wanted to accelerate a paradigm shift from physical to digital media in the at-home entertainment market, a shift they were betting the company on, they offered a free 30-day streaming trial, almost any time you wanted it. Today, with the fully evolved streaming market being what it is, they don’t offer a free trial anymore, but almost every new market entrant will. They do this so you’ll change your habits.

When a free trial is targeted like that, it works well. On the other hand, a poorly-thought-out free trial can create a non-revenue generating customer tier that can become an excuse for the startup to raise or spend money on the expectations of revenue that might never materialize.