Fried, 35, and Heinemeier Hansson, 29, revel in exposing what they see as the entrepreneurial fables in the era of social media Kool-Aid. They’ve won a wide following for their ventings on their Signal vs. Noise blog, citing 100,000 daily visitors, and in a book about building software, Getting Real. Their themes—don’t risk it all, stay small, charge for value, free is stupid—fly in the face of the conventional image that web success comes from big startups that attract massive amounts of free users and then massive buyouts—yet they’re right in line with a time-honored business practice: making a profit.
“The answer,” Fried says, “is to be fair on prices, deliver great services that your competitor can’t, and simply outlast free.”
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