I'm not talking about the previous posters 30% drop being a small margin. I'm saying that 1% paying customers is a risk and it's likely to get lower than that, the more exposure it gets.

First, why is 1% paying customers a risk? That's actually a fairly average/normal conversion rate for a freemium product. Trello, I wager gets way less than that.

Second, why is it likely to get lower the more exposure it gets?

I'm not an expert. I've never ran a SaaS business with a freemium model (I have ran SaaS businesses with other pricing models).

But, everything I've ever read on the subject indicates 1% is either bare minimum or too low. [1,2]

>Second, why is it likely to get lower the more exposure it gets?

In my experience the more hype you get, the lower your conversion rate all other things being equal (in my case conversion rate after free trial, vs freemium) because people who had to search you out to find you are more likely to convert than people who are just checking out the hottest new thing they saw on HN.

That's obviously not always true, and it may not be true in their case, but if I were the CEO, I'd be very focused on increasing my conversion rate.

1. https://hbr.org/2014/05/making-freemium-work 2. https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/04/should-your-startup-go-fre...