Similarly, you can price it for free or you can price it for dear, but never price it for cheap.

— Patrick McKenzie

• Taco Tuesday: why don’t we charge money?

  • (aka: when to be generous)
  • Network effects: Taco Tuesday gets better with more people, and new people; we want to lower the friction
    • (though: space in the house is limited; diminishing returns)
  • Charging leads to incentives for growth, or focus on size (?), or reduction of costs
  • Charging adds an obligation for support?
  • Culture / “weirdness points” — charging and negotiating pricing for things that are uncommon, is hard
  • You can make trades between immediate monetization and longterm growth. When you give a thing away for free (or otherwise underprice it), people have a better experience, are more willing to promote it word-of-mouth

• Which things are free, which things to charge for?

  • For patio11: internet blog posts are free (though with an optional donation subscription); consulting hours weeks are billed
  • Information: marginal cost of production is 0, so much more easy to give out
    • Advice, short engagements tend to be free

• On the flip side: very few people get used to pricing things and selling things

  • So charging for things might be a good muscle to develop
  • The thing that most people sell: their own time. Cf salary negotiations
    • Sometimes for money, sometimes for equity
  • Personal journey of income over time
  • Personal journey of sales over time: $500/mo on One Word, to Manifold, to Manifest, to Manifund

• Things to try and assess value of:

  • Information (websites, books)
  • Relationships: love, sex, friendships
  • Freedom (cf nonmonetary payoffs to starting a company)
  • Commute

• Game idea: pilot a character through various “trades”, based on their value in life