As of 2020, this is the exception rather than the rule. The problem is that focussing on adoption before focussing on value is very risky. You are constantly flirting with premature scaling before having found product/market fit (see e.g. Startup Genome project).

However, successful businesses that have been built on adoption are by-design much more likely to be well known. Again, it's entirely possible to build a business that relies on network effects or economies of scale, but it's not the default advice I would give to founder.

>Freemium is very well adopted all over. Literally entire app industry worth billions of dollars use this model.

No, you are confusing freemium with advertising here, which is the predominant business model. The challenge with freemium is the conversion into paid, which you cannot predict unless you have proven the value hypothesis already.

Actually nowhere in your original post do you include this "not claiming to be an expert" disclaimer.

As a result, when I read your original post, I assumed that perhaps you were an expert as there was no self-doubt at all evident.

I think perhaps that's what the allegedly negative post that you are responding to is getting at.

Where i’m coming from is having listened to advice from people who I looked up to, but who did it to get rid of me (because I was ignorant of protocols/etiquette), rather than being genuinely interested in my project. I’ve learned that the SV world has a high rate of failure and many are hungry, and they try to also carve out a role for themselves, or try to get involved somehow, even if that means they’ll claim competence in an area they’re not competent in. I was more naive then, compared to today, but believing these ‘gurus’ was a painful learning experience for me, because their advice often left me stranded in the end.

I’m not negative, it’s more just sharing my disappointments and struggles. Thanks again for your comment, which made me see I kinda broke my own rule