Yale scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours - <AUTHOR> http://news.yale.edu/2012/10/04/yale-scientists-explain-how-ketamine-vanquishes-depression-within-hours <comment><USER4> I used to take quite a few drugs recreationally and I can quite honestly say that Ketamine gave me 'God like' experiences unlike anything else I have ever experienced. Repeatedly (and reproducibly) I could 'see' everything in the universe from the smallest particle to the planets and solar system in one go. I could comprehend nature, science and space and observe everything working as a system, from a point way above it all (it is dissociative after all). It made me euphoric and happy and when coming down from the experience I could (and still can) remember that feeling and how powerful it was / is. Of course to an observer I was basically asleep in a chair.

This news doesn't surprise me at all.

<comment><USER5> I had a somewhat different experience. I thought that I had stopped breathing and that my heart had ceased (in actual fact my body was numb - I couldn't feel a pulse) so I stood in front of a mirror completely naked for the next 20 minutes staring at my chest. Thankfully reason stepped in and I managed to compute that if my pulse or breathing had ceased, I'd be in a heap on the floor rather than obsessing in front of a mirror. Suddenly I felt calm and proceeded to throw out some cool graphics in Photoshop and made an excellent puff pastry quiche. Again, without clothes.

My lesson was that drugs should be experimented with in the company of a friend or partner.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like quite a risky quiche. Did it come with extra crunchy bits?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-hole>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hacker News has a few readers who self-experiment with a variety of substances.

I'm not trying to stop them, but there are reports of Ketamine abuse being damaging to the bladder. Some people have had their bladders removed.

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17411492>)

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17344089>)

I have no idea on the dosing needed for harmful effects - is several large doses enough? Would very many small doses be harmful?

Some people taking anti-depressants do so for a long time. Most are recommended to take them for at least two years to prevent relapse, but some medications (especially venlafaxine) can be hard to come off. (I've been told that I'll probably be taking venlafaxine for the rest of my life.)

So, this news is exciting because better understanding of mental health problems is really important, and better treatments would be fantastic. But please be careful when self-experimenting with possible nootropics.

<comment><USER8> "But please be careful when self-experimenting with possible nootropics."

I would also add "please be careful when following the advice of a physician."

In fact, I think it may be best to just say "Please be careful."

<comment><USER7> eh, that's probably truer that most people like to think about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Orignal is <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6103/68> (paywall)

_________________

 _Abstract

Basic and clinical studies demonstrate that depression is associated with reduced size of brain regions that regulate mood and cognition, including the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, and decreased neuronal synapses in these areas. Antidepressants can block or reverse these neuronal deficits, although typical antidepressants have limited efficacy and delayed response times of weeks to months. A notable recent discovery shows that ketamine, a N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonist, produces rapid (within hours) antidepressant responses in patients who are resistant to typical antidepressants. Basic studies show that ketamine rapidly induces synaptogenesis and reverses the synaptic deficits caused by chronic stress. These findings highlight the central importance of homeostatic control of mood circuit connections and form the basis of a synaptogenic hypothesis of depression and treatment response._

<comment><USER9> For greater context, note that this is a Review article (that is to say, not an article describing new research, but rather an article synthesizing many recently published results and hypothesizing a theory that could unite them). It's part of a special issue that _Science_ is doing this week that focuses on depression. See <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6103/67.full> (not pay- walled) for a discussion of the various depression-centric papers that are in this issue.

<comment><USER10> With great context comes great information!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the press release submitted here: "In large doses, ketamine can cause short-term symptoms of psychosis and is abused as the party drug 'Special K.'" This is a general problem with drugs for mood disorders--the human mood regulatory system is very complicated, and it is possible for patients to engage in behavior that is dangerous to self and to others when they have low mood (are in a depressive episode) or when they have high mood (are in a manic episode). That's why a careful physician always asks about a patient's personal history when beginning treatment of someone seeking treatment for depression, to avoid starting out with treatments likely to trigger mania. Some human beings only get depressed, and never manic, but some can go awry in either direction.

I heard a National Public Radio story with interviews of researchers on the same issue as the press release submitted here while on a drive this afternoon. What most excites researchers about the ketamine studies is not a prospect of using ketamine itself as a frequent first-line drug for treating depression, but rather as a model for understanding brain function better and eventually developing new drugs that are even longer-lasting for treating depression and even less likely to trigger mania. Human mood disorders are very diverse--there are probably hundreds of rare genetic variants that increase the risk of mood system disruption under varying kinds of environmental stress--so there surely will not be just one drug that will successfully treat all patients, but rather a gradually growing toolkit of better and better drugs to treat more and more patients with less risk and fewer side-effects.

AFTER EDIT: User shrivats just kindly pointed, in a subcomment, to the overall summary of the Science special issue on depression, in which the ketamine research and related research is discussed. A paragraph describing another article in that issue is especially helpful for HN participants: "However, not all is bleak. There are individuals who overcome difficult situations and show astonishing resilience in the face of adverse circumstances and other forms of acute or chronic traumatic stress. Studying them might provide us with clues about what can go right. Southwick and Charney (p. 79) provide an overview of current ideas about why some people are more protected against stress and depression than others and how this knowledge may help us develop better treatments and successful prevention strategies." Several HN participants regularly write about strategies of building resilience to face the stress that many hackers face. Further research on that issue will also be part of the package in future improved treatments for mood disorders.

<comment><USER12> It would be nice if we could device a diminishing returns pill. I am not really sure how that would work, but maybe use a metabolical pathway as rate limiter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > In their research, Duman and others show that in a series of steps ketamine > triggers release of neurotransmitter glutamate, which in turn stimulates > growth of synapses. Research at Yale has shown that damage of these synaptic > connections caused by chronic stress is rapidly reversed by a single dose of > ketamine.

There's burgeoning evidence that depression is tied to a lack of neurogenesis (creation of new brain cells), which may also be tied to serotonin levels. Some believe that the reason SSRIs take weeks to have antidepressive effects, even though serotonin levels are restored almost immediately, is that it takes a while for that to stimulate new brain cells. It's far from certain though that serotonin has anything to do with depression or neurogenesis. The atypical antidepressant tianeptine (currently unapproved in the US, but widely used in western europe) apparently reduces serotonin levels while boosting neurogenesis, the study of which is summarized well by Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky [1]:

> … tianeptine prevented many of these stress-induced changes. These included > the spectroscopic alterations, the inhibition of cell proliferation, and a > significant increase in hippocampal volume (as compared with stress + > vehicle animals). Of significance (see below), tianeptine did not prevent > the stress-induced rise in cortisol levels.

The restoration of hippocampal volume is important because it's been shown that low hippocampal volumes correlate with emotional abuse in adolescents [2] (also by Yale researchers). This was breathtaking for me - bad parenting literally causes brain damage.

Special K and tianeptine aren't the only efforts at curing depression through neurogenesis. Neuralstem [3] is testing a drug in humans to treat major depressive disorder by restoring hippocampal volume, with a controlled study to complete early next year. That is the only new drug I'm aware of. Regardless, the serotonin model of depression, the one which produced Prozac etc. isn't the last word, and it's looking more likely that a dearth of new synapses may be the culprit in clinical depression.

[1] <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC60045/>

[2] [http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/DomesticViolence/3002...](http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/DomesticViolence/30029)

[3] <http://www.neuralstem.com/pharmaceuticals-for-depression>

<comment><USER14> On the point of neurogenesis this is also the theorised mechanism of Electroconvulsive therapy for Treatment-resistant depression - it's been interesting watching the evidence for the mechanisms of the 2 different treatments slowly grow

<comment><USER8> Cool.

For those of you who would like a reference supporting this claim, check out the following: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10051225>.

I often share stuff I read on HN with friends and it's useful to have evidence beyond "some dude on HN said so."

<comment><USER14> thanks, I was too lazy to look it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's my shot at "the most revealing job interview question" (not looking for a job, I do neuroscience in a separate area):

The review explains why the rapid action of ketamine excites so many researchers:

 _The discovery that ketamine rapidly increases the number and function of synaptic connections has focused attention on synaptogenesis as a fundamental process for the treatment of depressive symptoms and also suggests that disruption of synaptogenesis and loss of connections underlies the pathophysiology of depression._

This excites researchers not because ketamine itself would be used to combat depression, but because depression is still extremely symptomatically defined, making it difficult to design treatments for. That's roughly how it's diagnosed in the diagnostic manual used by most psychiatrists: check off a list of symptoms, if you have enough, you're depressed. It's like going to the doctor and explaining that your stomach hurts and they say "well, looks like you have abdominal pain, here's some Advil." Treating the symptoms would be great if only there were a happiness dial in the brain. Indeed, the effect of most anti-depressants is often demonstrated prior to a mechanistic understanding of _why_ they make many patients feel better.

Recently there has been substantial evidence of "synaptogenesis" - <USER2> formation of new potential connections between neurons - from multiple treatments, including ketamine. So now we have this new picture emerging: depressed patients tend to have atrophied and "less-connected" neurons in some brain areas, and some drugs can reverse it, in particular ketamine can reverse it quite rapidly, and it works in rodents as well as humans.

That makes it very amenable to study. The way this often works in the lab is the following. Take some rodents, subject them to unpredictable stress to get them depressed, then give some ketamine. It makes them better. Euthanize the rodents, slice the brains, and note that the non-ketamine ones have less dendritic spines in certain areas ("potential input points to a neuron"), but remarkably, the ketamine ones have more in those areas.

The most important step comes next, where you try to find out what ketamine is actually doing, since, again, there's no happiness dial in the brain. Create strains of "knock-out" rodents, where you block the production of certain chemicals or proteins you think ketamine might affect by altering their genetic composition. This step is crucial, because it allows you to find out _which_ effect of ketamine is providing the benefit, because there are many. You can do this both by observing both behavior (does the ketamine not improve mood in the genetically altered rodents?) and in physiology (does the ketamine still increase synaptogenesis in the altered rodents?).

In the end you can kind of work out a map of sorts: ketamine does X things to the brain and Y in X are the ones that are important, sometimes in certain combinations. Then you can start creating intelligent drugs that pinpoint those important processes, to avoid the unfortunate side effects of drugs like ketamine. Moreover, you now have a better _physiological_ understanding of depression, instead of just a symptomatic one.

To put it in machine-learning language, it's like going from ideal observer analysis like mutual information, to an actual parametric model where you understand the distributions themselves.

<comment><USER16> There are many assumptions in the article and in your comment. We have two data we will for now assume are facts: 1\. depressed people feel better after taking ketamine 2\. katamine taking is correlated with synapse generation

You manage to infer, as well as the author of the OP, that depression decreases the number of synapses or eventually induce a sort fatigue in synapses because of stress. That depression is not only correlated but also induced by synapse depletion, that increasing the number of synapse is what makes depressed people feel better, that depression (the symptom) has one cause, here stress inducing synapse fatigue or depletion, etc.

It takes just common sense thinking to understand that most of this reasoning is just crap. Suggesting to put that in a machine learning language is is even more depressing.

<comment><USER17> Who are you? What is the area of your expertise that makes you think you are qualified to make this comment? What are your sources?

<comment><USER18> I suggest that you resist posting this kind of inquiry in a scientific discussion. In science, only evidence counts, not authority or expertise. In science, the quality of evidence is all that matters, not its source.

In religion and politics, people are judged based on their origins and their "authority". Not in science.

The OP should have posted sources or links, but apart from that, his remark needs to be evaluated on its merits, not _his_ merits.

"Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion." — Richard Feynman

<comment><USER19> The way in which you formulate responses tends to go a long way in determining the reaction you will get. Disagreeing with people is fine and good, disparaging them for lacking common sense or being foolish is generally not helpful and shows either a high level of immaturity or a profound lack of understanding of effective human communication.

Here is a quick rewrite of the snarkiest bit of the post that I think is not only drastically more civil but just as effective:

"I fear the reasoning here is incorrect as it conflates correlation with causation. Being too hasty in using this conclusion with machine learning would be a mistake."

I know there is a segment here that doesn't believe tone/communication style should matter, that it is, or should be, entirely about the underlying verisimilitude of their statements; unfortunately, that is not how 99% of human beings actually operate. So while you are free to rail against reality it will make you drastically less effective than you might otherwise be.

<comment><USER18> > Disagreeing with people is fine and good, disparaging them for lacking > common sense or being foolish

Okay, but first, locate and circle the words you have just assigned to me in my original post. What? Can't find those words? Know the expression "straw man"?

<comment><USER19> My response was really meant to be addressed to chmike, I put it as a response to your post only because you claimed, like so many others here do, that all that matters are facts not "authority" (which you do call out) or "tone/style", which you don't specifically call out but is also a classic theme in these kind of discussions. Your response does fall squarely under the umbrella of my original advice though, I am not sure if the irony was intended or not. Your accusation of use of a straw man seems to also imply you view this as a debate instead of a discussion, which is sad but not uncommon.

<comment><USER18> > only because you claimed, like so many others here do, that all that matters > are facts not "authority"

I ... never ... said .. any ... such ... thing.

Circle the words on the screen in front of you, where I ever uttered these words, anywhere, on God's green Earth.

You need to start reading what people say, not what your overactive imagination believes they said.

> ... seems to also imply you view this as a debate instead of a discussion > ...

When someone invents a position to conveniently argue against, of course it's a debate -- a debate between fantasy and reality.

Notice how I have in each and every case replied directly to your words, which I quote in full. Notice how you don't have time to check in with reality before ascending your soapbox.

<comment><USER20> > I ... never ... said .. any ... such ... thing.

Can you then perhaps elaborate how else we should take this quote from you:

> I suggest that you resist posting this kind of inquiry in a scientific > discussion. In science, only evidence counts, not authority or expertise. In > science, the quality of evidence is all that matters, not its source.

As well as this in your reply to me:

> The bottom line in science, and in any scientific discussion, is that > authority and expertise are never important. The greatest amount of > scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific > evidence.

Of course you might argue that this is not a "scientific discussion", but that would make both of these messages meaningless or intentionally obtuse in the context they were posted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also of interest is the observation that Ketamine (and PCP) are associated with NMDA Antagonist Neurotoxicity (Olney's Lesions), a form of brain damage.

Not really something you should want to self medicate with at this point until more research is done.

<http://www.dextroverse.org/txt/olney.txt>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olneys_lesions>

<comment><USER22> I originally majored in biochemistry, so this stuff is a nerdy enjoyment.

The levels of ketamine required to form Olney's Lesions are 40mg/kg (given olney.txt), whereas the typical dose to reach a k-hole (the highest recreational level) is 1mg/kg. <http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml> Also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olneys_lesions#Controversy>

In addition, the dosage levels of recreational ketamine are lower than the anesthetic dosages of ketamine. Repeated use of ketamine would probably still cause problems though, though the problems would be more along the lines of general drug dependency and not being able to think straight.

 _> Not really something you should want to self medicate with at this point until more research is done._

I dunno. Depression can be really dangerous & costly too-- both from suicide and just generally not being happy in life.

<comment><USER23> Ketamine has been known to be "psychologically dependent" with heavy use - <USER3> guess the real world might seem a bit dull for some after all the crazy things that happen in the K-hole. But very heavy users can also experience extreme bladder damage, as their tolerance and dosage rise.

It's fascinating to see these demonised recreational drugs being researched finally for their beneficial side-effects, sometimes in very small doses. Another one that comes to mind is the reported use of sub-psychoactive doses of LSD to combat the horror of cluster headaches.

<comment><USER22> My buddy suffers from cluster headaches and he self-retreated with low doses of LSD. But he was talking to his doctor in the last year, and he learned that there are ergotamine-based cluster headache medications. LSD also comes from that chemical, so he jumped on the opportunity.

He's been cluster-headache free since January, and he's really happy that he doesn't have to rely on the black market for medication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _In their research, Duman and others show that in a series of steps ketamine triggers release of neurotransmitter glutamate, which in turn stimulates growth of synapses._

MSG is monosodium glutamate, and there is research to show MSG is toxic -- it's the glutamate that's bad for you, not the sodium. Flooding your body with excess glutamate throws off the brain's delicate balance of this neurotransmitter and leads to excitotoxicity (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excitotoxicity>).

The blood-brain barrier protects you from some of it, but the blood-brain barrier is not fully formed in babies, and this is why MSG not allowed in baby food. However, the blood brain barrier can be weakened by any number of reasons in adults, such as when you have a fever.

Why would ketamine's release of glutamate be different and good for you in this case?

<comment><USER25> Because it's a potent NMDA antagonist which blocks glutamate induced excitotoxicity.

Also see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMDA_receptor_antagonist#Potent...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMDA_receptor_antagonist#Potential_for_treatment_of_excitotoxicity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yale scientists excitedly, repeatedly explain to anyone in the quad how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours, in, you know, a million million ways (yale.edu)

I've read too many Onion headlines to ever read headlines like this again.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ketamine & autism

"Drug Reverses Abnormal Brain Function in Rett Syndrome Mice"

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121003132418.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121003132418.htm)

 _"ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2012) — A promising study out October 3 in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that in a mouse model of Rett syndrome, researchers were able to reverse abnormalities in brain activity and improve neurological function by treating the animals with an FDA-approved anesthesia drug, ketamine. Rett syndrome is among the most severe autism-related disorders, affecting about one in 10,000 female births per year, with no effective treatments available."_

</comment><comment><USER18> > _Yale scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours_

Translation: "Yale scientists speculate about how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours" And until there's a strictly designed study with a control group, we'll be no closer to a definitive answer. But considering the drug and its role and target, a control group would be unethical.

<comment><USER28> Err why is a non lethal, not particularly damaging drug going to be an unethical drug trial?

<comment><USER18> > Err why is a non lethal, not particularly damaging drug going to be an > unethical drug trial?

Antidepression drugs, indeed all psychoactive drugs, are always a potential ethics issue. Consider the brouhaha that erupted when it was discovered that some antidepression drugs caused people to commit suicide or have suicidal thoughts:

[http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=31...](http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=31649)

A quote: "The FDA has warned that children and adults taking antidepressants can become suicidal in the first weeks of therapy and that physicians should watch patients closely when first giving the drugs or changing dosages. The FDA is asking drug manufacturers to place explicit warnings about the drugs' side effects, including the risk of suicide, on their labels."

Any human-administered drug is a potential ethical issue, from vitamins upward. Imagine a study in which an experimental group is given a daily vitamin, and a control group is given a placebo but told they're receiving a vitamin. Several years go by and the relative health of the study participants is closely monitored.

Can you not see the ethical issue here? Can you not imagine the lawsuits that would result from the parents of those in the control group who perhaps didn't thrive as expected, or for some completely imaginary consequence having nothing to do with the vitamin study, but sufficient to sue for civil damages?

And finally, depression drugs are hardly "non lethal, not particularly damaging". They are a source of great controversy and have been the focus of a number of conflicts over the years.

<comment><USER29> That's why it's normal these days, for clinical studies, for the control group to receive current best available treatment, rather than a placebo.

After all, what you're generally trying to find out is whether the new treatment is better than what you already have - just being better than a placebo isn't very informative.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I strongly recommend reading Ben Goldacre's work[1].

[1] Start at badscience.net.

<comment><USER18> > That's why it's normal these days, for clinical studies, for the control > group to receive current best available treatment, rather than a placebo.

That's one of the reasons such studies are so unreliable -- they depend on a comparison of two or more drugs that may operate in different ways, rather than comparing a drug to the absence of a drug.

The result is predictable -- unbiased meta-analyses show that antidepressants don't work:

[http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050045)

This is not to say that wouldn't have been the outcome anyway, regardless of the methods used, only that testing two drugs at once introduces confounding factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting news, but the potential for abuse is worrisome. Recreational ketamine produces dissociative states similar to heavy drunkenness in the short term, and frequent repeat use is known to damage a part of the brain called Broca's region through cellular overheating, seriously impacting speech formation.

<comment><USER31> When looking at pharmaceutical drugs that also have a recreation use I think the number one thing to be concerned with is how addictive they are. From what I can find there really isn't any evidence to support the claim that ketamine is very addictive.

Also depression is in and of itself dangerous. Even avoiding the entire topic of suicide, depression can lead to a variety of self destructive behaviors and poor decisions. Additionally plenty of people suffering from depression will naturally 'self medicate' with drugs that don't actually address the underlying neurological issues that ketamine might, and certainly can cause physical harm.

I think it's somewhat odd that in the 21st century we still aren't comfortable seeing physical and mental illness on the same level. People committing suicide die of an illness in no different a way than people dying of cancer. Yet there is very little in the way of public support of combating suicide the way there is for cancer. There is little debate that opiates (dramatically more risk for abuse) should be used to treat physical pain, and yet people get very nervous about the potential for misuse in a much less risky drug which could provide similar relief to mental anguish.

<comment><USER32> Combating depressions and suicides. In many cases there's also outside causes that begins downward spirals.

People often suggests therapy and/or pills that changes _you_. But they rare suggests exploring external causes, and external solutions.

For example, it may be better to drug bullies rather than victims...

<comment><USER33> Some social critics say psychology/psychiatry's rise is in part because it let other people and institutions do victim blaming, and not invest in treating societal problems.

It also fits well with neo-liberal thought:"little concern for externalities", "rational consumer" and this kind of bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In the article, near the end, they suggest that scientists are looking into alternatives that work like Ketamine, but so far none work as fast as K.

"Efforts to develop drugs that replicate the effects of ketamine have produced some promising results, but they do not act as quickly as ketamine. Researchers are investigating alternatives they hope can duplicate the efficacy and rapid response of ketamine."

So my question is, why not just administer K?

<comment><USER35> Side effects from abuse, and the short term (7-10 day) duration of the effect. If they can isolate the effective properties and recreate them, it's possible to find a drug or drugs that can solve those two problems. Also, it's unlikely that (due to it's potential for abuse) ketamine prescriptions will be handed out anytime soon. So patients can go in for weekly treatment, or researchers can find something more palatable to the current political climate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Was the antidepressant effects of ketamine observed at normal anesthetic dosages (1-2mg/kg)?

<comment><USER37> The antidepressant effects are found at even half of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Recreational drugs temporarily make people happier? No way... I'm glad the fine minds at Yale are studying such important, ground breaking stuff. I can't wait until this research leads to new antidepressants that turn more people into zombies.

<comment><USER39> I'd rather be a zombie than continue on as I do today

<comment><USER40> That statement implies that you're currently not medicated and also depressed. If that's the case, you really should meet with a psychiatrist; there's no reason to suffer.

The hyper-rational type of people here are more likely to believe in the absoluteness of their own perception of reality and therefore are less likely to seek treatment. If you're a hold-out and apparently in need, truly you'd be surprised how much medically-manipulated brain chemistry can improve your quality of life. A person's emotional world is highly plastic but successfully changing it requires the precise knowledge and quality control that is provided by a doctor and medicine.

<comment><USER41> _you'd be surprised how much medically-manipulated brain chemistry can improve your quality of life_

Except in severe depression, antidepressants have no clinical advantage over placebos:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/01/28/the- depress...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/01/28/the-depressing- news-about-antidepressants.html)

According to Kirsch, antidepressant trials were also compromised by side- effect leakage: the drugs had side effects while the placebos did not, so patients knew when they were not taking a placebo. That's the equivalent of putting your finger on the scale. As far as I know, there has been no attempt to measure that distorting effect (Kirsch only mentions it), nor any clinical trials of antidepressants conducted on a level playing field, where the placebo had similar side effects to the drug. But I haven't searched, and if such studies exist, I'd welcome correction.

<comment><USER42> > Except in severe depression, antidepressants have no clinical advantage over > placebos:

ECT can have a much better effect in these cases.

[http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/electroconvulsive- therapy/M...](http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/electroconvulsive- therapy/MY00129)

[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57400793-10391704/ele...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57400793-10391704/electroconvulsive- therapy-effectively-treats-severe-depression-how/)

And, it turns out, antidepressants can help ECT:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706161300.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706161300.htm)

But keep in mind that ECT is only for _crisis-level severe_ depression:

> ECT uses an electrical stimulus to the brain to induce seizures. It is > prescribed for patients with crisis-level severe depression – who are > catatonic (people who are so slowed down that they stop moving, talking and > eating) or suicidal – or for patients with major depression who have not > responded to medication.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Problems the 'community' has with putting Flash on iPhone - <AUTHOR>

What are the technical hurdles that have blocked "hackers" from installing Flash on the iPhone?  It appears from the outside almost anything else is hackable on the iPhone.
Thank you,
mars <comment><USER2> I believe that flash has been hacked on the iphone, but it is non-jailbroken phones which the majority of the discussion surrounds (jailbroken iPhones aren't the norm).

Google has lots of listings for iphone/flash hacks [http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...](http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=hack+flash+iphone)

<comment><AUTHOR> My question is specifically for the jailbroken phones, as hacking of the iPhone begins there.

I have seen nothing besides the odd gnash flash hack on youtube that has flash running within the browser on the iPhone. Most "Hacks" are Site/Server hacks where the site you are browsing to adds Javascript code to auto run flash content for the iPhone.

Question still stands, what are the big hurdles blocking hackers from installing a flash plugin on the iPhone either on safari or other browser?</comment></comment>


Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/22/google-relies-on-akamai-to-stream-youtube-live-700000-concurrent-viewers/

<comment><USER2> Kind of wish I'd gone today, but the ridiculous thing was if you got tickets (which I did), they weren't guaranteed for entry. It was first come first served for getting inside. They didn't even give an indication of how overbooked it was... It ended up being a three-tier lottery.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's awesome to see that YouTube's comment section still remains as funny as ever even when they're streaming live:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/11/youtube...](http://www.techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/11/youtubelive1.jpg)

Seriously, some of the funniest things I've ever read come from the minds of YouTube-video commenters. This one's not a great example, but still...</comment>


Show HN: Yes BOSS – A game with a critical view on "cool" Bosses - <AUTHOR> https://sharpedstonestudios.itch.io/yes-boss <comment><AUTHOR> We made this game in 24 hours at a game jam this weekend. The idea is based on an article by Le Temps (a swiss journal) which is titled: at the office, the tyranny of the cool ([https://www.letemps.ch/societe/bureau-tyrannie- cool](https://www.letemps.ch/societe/bureau-tyrannie-cool)).

The game is played with wasd and e to interact. Let us know what you think!

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the game! Its funny, and I like working with fish. Couple of notes. The music is fun, for the first couple loops after that its a bit grating. A bit more explanation and user instruction would make this game much easier to play. Other than that a great game!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Noted, we will work on the music, or give an option to disable it. For the user instruction, I was thinking about adding a couple more bubbles to the player, for instance "I should pick up that box now", "I should probably bring that box to the machine", etc., do you think this would be an improvement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reached the third day and I feel like a champ!

Damn this is hard.</comment>


ROOT: analyzing, storing and visualizing big data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/root-project/root <comment><USER2> Well, that's a blast from the past. My MSc final year project was done using this, back when it was internal to CERN. Really glad to see it more widely available, seeing how powerful it is!</comment>


How to Convert a Free User to a Premium User - <AUTHOR> https://chagency.co.uk/blog/increasing-user-retention/how-to-convert-a-free-user-to-a-premium-user/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't answer the most important question about the fremium model -- how to balance it? Because the best possible conversion rate is only possible when the fremium is balanced correctly. I've been experimenting with fremium models for a few years and understood that the key to balancing freemium correctly is to precisely understand the value that your product creates. Then the balancing becomes simple: if a user doesn't see much value in the product then it's free. If the product creates significant value for the user then it's premium.

Giving away for free a product that creates significant value is charity.

Trying to charge a user for a product that offers little value will limit your user base and market awareness.

If you don't understand exactly the value your product creates then you are in trouble and not being able to balance fremium correctly is only one of the problems in this case.

<comment><USER3> We attempt to do what you describe: charge users for whom we create lots of value (power users), and give it away for free to others (casual users).

The difficulty is that if you want word to spread among communities of people that contain your power users (and would-be power users), then by charging them money, you're constraining growth in those key communities. Any thoughts on how to deal with this specific tradeoff?

I'd be interested to hear more of your insights, especially about how the balance might change over time. Do you give away more for free in the early days, to raise more awareness? How do you know when it's time to stop giving it away for free?

<comment><USER2> >The difficulty is that if you want word to spread among communities of people that contain your power users (and would-be power users), then by charging them money, you're constraining growth in those key communities. Any thoughts on how to deal with this specific tradeoff?

We gave away premium licenses for free (no strings attached) to some socially active power users. It helped us to increase awareness.

Also, I found that premium users are more loyal in general and more willing to share the knowledge about our product.

>Do you give away more for free in the early days, to raise more awareness?

We surely did give away more for free in the early days. Partly, because we still figured out the product/market fit. As we pinpointed the PMF and added new features we periodically rebalanced the free offering. Since many new features became also available in the free edition we reduced some limits and capabilities of the free edition.

>How do you know when it's time to stop giving it away for free?

We never stopped. We still have a freemium model [1].

Overall, we try to keep the ratio of premium to free users at around 1:5. With my previous product, the ratio was 1:50 which was too unbalanced as I realized later.

[1] Comparison of our free/premium editions: [https://easymorph.com/buy.html](https://easymorph.com/buy.html).

<comment><USER3> How much do you think the ratio of free/premium should depend on the cost of providing services? Obviously if there are large hard costs associated with each user, the ratio can only be so high. But if there is a low cost of service to free users, what's the next step in figuring out the right ratio? Is 50:1 always too high?

<comment><USER2> I believe the answer is not in the cost of providing service but rather if your product creates value more than its price or not. Just a few questions to think about: why are there so many free users? Is it because the premium can't provide enough value for them to justify purchase? Is it because the need in general is not significant so no matter how good your product is its conceptual value is not significant? Is it because the free users simply are not aware how to extract more value from your product with the premium version?

I suppose having answers to such questions would give a better understanding of the most efficient free/premium ratio.

Feel free to reach out to me by <username> at easymorph dot com for a chat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This article really resonates with me: it puts into words how I've been feeling about handling SaaS pricing and product features.

My main takeaway is: don't squeeze money out of your customers by severely limiting the free plan. Focus on delivering as much value to your users as possible. Help them grow so you can grow together. You will get happy customers who will be happy to recommend you, and happy to pay for your service.

Cloudflare, one of the examples mentioned in the article, is also a hero of mine, in terms of how much value they offer for free.

<comment><USER4> It's also not even completely altruistic. The free accounts on Cloudflare serve as an incredibly diverse source of first party signal intelligence, which directly impacts the quality of the offering they're able to provide to paid accounts.

The fact that there's at least nominal value to Cloudflare in having me as a free customer gives me confidence and reassurance in using their product, as it lends credence to the long term availability of my free tier account and that I won't suddenly be the victim of a shift in their marketing and sales development budget.

I'm not sure what the right term for that type of incentive alignment is, but it reminds of me Geico auto insurance. As a business, their goal is to provide a long term and stable source of float to Berkshire Hathaway[1], not quarterly profits. To do that, they've optimized their business to capture and retain as much market share as reasonably feasible. Their rates are truly reflective of the actuarial expectations of insuring you - there's virtually no profit margin baked in because that could prevent marketshare growth, and you won't get bitten by shady exclusions buried in the fine print that you only find out about when you try to file a claim, and you won't get hit with an unexpectedly huge rate increase at renewal time due to a slightly worse than expected quarter and the need to engineer short term profits. The "gotcha" with Geico's pricing model is that they're using my business as leverage for other purposes (premiums as float to provide leverage to BH).

I do a lot of work in optimizing monetization strategies and developing/optimizing business processes, so I may be an atypical consumer. But I have far greater adoption of services when I understand the value drivers of the relationship. If you're not directly making profit off of me, I'm either a marketing expense in your acquisition process or you're using our relationship to derive profit elsewhere. If I'm a marketing expense I'll try to avoid building reliance on your product into my life because the stability of our relationship is unknown. And if you're deriving profit from our relationship and I don't understand how, I'll default to assuming an adversarial relationship where either "I'm the product" or there's a hidden catch coming in the future. Whereas if I know that you're not directly extracting profit from our relationship, and I understand how you're indirectly driving profit from our relationship, I'm far more likely to trust you and integrate your product into my life.

<comment><USER5> " If you're not directly making profit off of me, I'm either a marketing expense in your acquisition process or you're using our relationship to derive profit elsewhere"

Or there's the 'conversion option'.

A freemium user at any given time has a probability of conversion, and that probability is an option on future cash-flows.

Surely, the probability is highest somewhere near the start of use, but not right at the start, as most users probably start with freemium anyhow.

With products like Dropbox which are in some cases 'shared' \- there's a material network externalization as well, which is a probability that a freemium account will bring in others. This goes beyond referral/word of mouth to the extent that the product is naturally networked.

For this later reason - social media sites are almost always free because the economic potentiality of the network beyond 'you' is always considerably greater than 'just you'.

Also, as you hinted at in your Geico example, is that there economic realities to incumbency and market share. Once something becomes a market leader and the 'de-facto' option, then there can be incredible leverage, especially in networked situations. What is the current alternative to Facebook today? Not much.

Obviously the dynamic changes once market share is established but before that, there's an impetus keep prices down.

Venture Capital is keen on that to the point wherein one might consider that VC money is just really a form of 'economic dumping' , i.e. money getting thrown into markets to sell stuff below market value to obtain market share. It's illegal in some ways!

<comment><USER4> The 'conversion option' is just a bottom of funnel component of your acquisition strategy, and the costs to support those freemium users is still a component of your marketing spend.

For established marketing channels/user segments, you should be able to identify your response curves and probability of conversion at each stage of your marketing/acquisition funnel, including from freemium to paid user. If freemium conversions is a component of your sales process, you should absolutely be attributing the costs associated with supporting freemium users towards marketing, net any freemium-specific revenue streams such as ads. It's a fairly substantial component of the fully burdened cost per acquisition, and by allocating the expense towards marketing rather than diffusing it into operations, you get a much more actionable view of your true CPA. Being able to do so at a granular level requires putting in effort to integrate your marketing analytics with your operational analytics. But even just looking at it in aggregate is beneficial to understanding acquisition costs.

Network effects complicate that calculation a bit, depending on the nature of the network effect. Freemium Dropbox users sharing files could lead to net sign ups, as you mentioned. But the value from that is incremental user acquisition, and is still solidly a component of your marketing/acquisition costs. Contrasted with your social network example, where there is intrinsic leverage afforded by the size of the network that's independent/distinct from the potential to drive incremental user acquisition.

VC is its own beast. As you said, it's essentially a form of economic dumping. They prioritize growing market share first, and identifying network effects and associated leverage potential after the fact. Only _after_ all that do they really mature their business model, and does it make sense to try to understand what component of network effects is a marketing benefit vs. a product benefit. Uber is a perfect example of this - their original pitch[1] was very solidly as a taxi app, and one that used exclusivity as a selling point no less. Virtually all of their pitched areas of growth were around potential for optimizing personal transit, with only a single mention of branching out their infrastructure to other location based services applications. Now they've distanced themselves as much as possible from their identity as a taxi service and repositioned themselves as a logistics and transportation juggernaut. And the ubiquity, availability, and consistency of their network is a core component that enables that product identity.

[1] [https://medium.com/@gc/the-beginning-of- uber-7fb17e544851](https://medium.com/@gc/the-beginning-of-uber-7fb17e544851)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Provide incentive for prospects to sign up for freemium but do not provide > too much value so that free version of the product is enough."

For me, Dropbox, Spotify and GitHub all do this - naming them as examples of companies that don't is plain wrong to me.

Dropbox: 2gb of storage is nothing (weird and a bit sickening, but still).

Spotify: The ads experience in Spotify is probably one of the worst user experiences I know - so no real value here.

GitHub: no private repos for free users (might have changed?) made me choose Bitbucket. No use without private.

All in all, I don't really agree with the article: I actually do believe that a not-amazing-but-still-great experience is the way to go. See: Asana. It's OK++ for free, but I pay because it's better when I pay.

<comment><USER7> Maybe in your opinion these are all true because you seem to be a "power user" of any service you use. But for the large majority of people:

\- 2GB is more than enough for Word documents and a few pictures.

\- Listening to ads is totally normal because what's the alternative to Spotify? Radio.

\- Most programmers have a job that pays well (and if not, they're in education), so they just need an online git repo for their hobby open-source projects.

<comment><USER8> True, when it comes to radio, we don't have the luxury of complaining about ads. Sure, you can switch to another station but what if you're driving...?

<comment><USER9> Press a button on the steering wheel to switch to playing music off my phone via Bluetooth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few days ago there was a Medium post from the founder of GumRoad where he talked about companies create value but only ever capture a small portion of it. Combined with this post, I think there is an argument for always doing whatever creates the most overall value between the company and its users. Worry about capturing it later (as long as you can survive) but if a choice increases the company's overall value creation, it is probably the right choice. It makes a simple decision out of many complicated scenarios.

<comment><USER8> thx for the comment. yep, it's exactly about worrying about how to capture the value later. but through equality of opportunity, more often than not it will make its way to you (this captured value)

as I mentioned in the article, it might be hard to grasp for someone who didn't experience it

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice article, bad examples.

Spotify restricts the amount of songs you can skip to 10 in the free version. And next they play you an ad where they stage the (premium) feature of unlimited skipping as some revolutionary game-changer for music players. This anti-feature has literally no other upside for Spotify other than annoying users into subscribing. Which is all completely fair, since it is free after all but I can't find any mechanism which is more to the point of

      "Provide incentive for prospects to sign up for freemium but do not provide too much value so that free version of the product is enough."

I'm on the fence about the assessment of Dropbox as well, it has a load of dark patterns like nagging or bait and switch even and especially for paying users, so I'm not sold it wants to be my friend...

<comment><USER12> Historically, some spotify ads would straight up say they were being annoying to get you to subscribe. "if you subscribe you don't have to listen to these ads anymore!"

<comment><USER13> I believe they still do, at least the Dutch advertisements.

Personally, I am more than happy paying for Spotify family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The elephant in the room is the lack of true dynamic pricing in SaaS. Dynamic pricing optimizes value capture and at the same time unlocks more value to users who otherwise would be stuck in the free tier. Of course, dynamic pricing is not easy to implement and might result in perceived price unfairness. But done right, you can immediately increase your revenue and drastically reduce the number of free users. True dynamic pricing involves a mechanism, such as the Vickery auction, to measure a user's maximum willingness-to-pay instead of A/B testing different price points. In an ideal world, every active user pays a portion of their maximum willingness-to-pay (perceived value).

Disclaimer: I'm the co-founder of Veylinx, a platform to measure maximum willingness-to-pay of users.

<comment><USER15> Veylinx looks interesting, but no pricing info on your website I could find... Is it also part of extracting maximum value? ;-)

In all seriousness though, I think your service is something I'd be curious to find out more about and try. But we're a very small company (B2C in higher education), so upfront pricing really helps me gauge if it's something I can realistically explore, or if it's those typical "enterprise: call us" scenarios, then it's just never going to happen.

<comment><USER14> Sent you an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As an end-user - make it cheap and as frictionless as possible (and to providers, my take would to be sacrifice pretty much anything on this altar).

I'm not a provider, so can only provide anecdotal advise.

1) Google Drive. I started out (along with I suspect most people on Drop Box). DB blew my mind - it was novel. Then google rocked up and did the same thing. Then I got more capacity for stuff like "doing a security checkup", "integrated with gmail" then "free uncompressed 4k off your new Pixel phone" \- and now I pay them cold, hard, money each month. Drop Box just sat there doing little in the meantime apart from asking me for money. Think it all boiled down to me considering them all the same, but google kept me engaged, gave me more every so often - so when I needed it, they were what I was using day to day.

2) Plex. Liked the free version and started using it. More importantly started finding free version kept on creeping into my stack-solutions I was building. "Free really good, but would really find that 'premium version' useful" Then bit the bullet on a "discounted unlimited version for life". Know for a fact there are 4/5 people out there that did the same based on my recommendation/server, and presume it's organically growing on from there.

3) Feedly. Switched to it as a replacement for Google/RSS Reader. I love it to bits and use it daily. Never given them a cent. There is a premium version for $5 a month, which has features I don't need. Seemingly no way to give them beer-tokens, a dollar a month. THE most frustrating use-case. All I can do is recommend them to others, and hope one of them pays (and T&C change doesn't leave me moving on and regretting my recommendation.

4) Spotify. I just paid from the start. Never even tried the free version. I'm 'happy paying'. Maybe similar to Netflix. I'll hand over an extra few dollars for a family plan or a 4k one - but I'm in. Please don't screw me, as the pain of moving isn't something I'm planning for my next month.

5) Patreon. I'm pretty sure I dislike everything about them - but they do provide a very easy/universal way to send a single dollar a month to somebody I admire. I pretty much loathe the politics associated (I'm a defend free- speech even though I detest it) sort of a person. BUT no better option yet (wanky youtube $5 a month for an icon in chat, is not what I'm looking for).

<comment><USER8> Two of your examples are tightly correlated to some other articles of mine.

The Google Drive example — I said this:

"If you're in a monopolistic environment and you're successful, others will come. You can start building the experience right now in order to widen the gap between the next newcomer and you."

[https://chagency.co.uk/blog/experiences/what-makes-or- breaks...](https://chagency.co.uk/blog/experiences/what-makes-or-breaks-the- long-term-status-of-a-company/)

Dropbox was in a monopolistic environment, you called it as well saying it was novel. In the meantime, GD came and ate them. Instead of "staying there doing nothing and asking for money", they had time to widen the gap between them and others.

Where are they nowadays? They're doing good but they had to remarket themselves towards artists and creatives. I'm not sure where they would have been today had it not been for Apple, Amazon and Google coming up but that's the situation.

> 5) Patreon. I'm pretty sure I dislike everything about them - but they do > provide a very easy/universal way to send a single dollar a month to > somebody I admire. I pretty much loathe the politics associated (I'm a > defend free-speech even though I detest it) sort of a person. BUT no better > option yet (wanky youtube $5 a month for an icon in chat, is not what I'm > looking for).

I've only briefly read about the controversies with them and I know Jordan Peterson is looking to create his own Patreon-like platform. Which leads to my (so far two-part) posts around "Don't hold your user hostages"

[https://chagency.co.uk/blog/increasing-user- retention/dont-t...](https://chagency.co.uk/blog/increasing-user- retention/dont-take-your-customers-hostages-facilitate-their-exit/)

In this case, Patreon holds their users hostages — just like you said, you dislike everything about them but it's the only far ———— so far. As a consequence of the controversy (i.e. we, Patreon, do this), at least one more platform will come out. And the guy has some following.

Thx for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _When I pay them I do so happily as I support their cause._

This surely happens, but if it were common then wouldn't donationware be more successful than it is? I have used various pieces of freeware/donationware over the years but they all seem like they're just scraping by.

<comment><USER8> What I was touching is when I move from a free plan to a paid plan. When the company took the risk. I know a lot of rich people who like to start lean simply for the sake of seeing proof of concept. They have millions in their bank yet they ask their cofounder to chip in £5,000 on the idea.

So the company offering the product took the risk (and the cost associated) of seeing if the idea works. But then, what I say is that they should charge enough on the premium to cover for all the freemium.

I didn't have in mind donation systems

<comment><USER3> You replied to several comment with this anecdote about _" rich people who like to start lean...They have millions in the bank yet ask their cofounder to chip in £5,000 on the idea."_

What's the point of this illustration? Are you saying this is a jerky thing for rich people to do? Or is there some other lesson here? I'm honestly confused, and it's weird to see it repeated through so many threads.

> _I didn 't have in mind donation systems_

You say to go as free as much as possible, to get people "on your side". This is precisely what happens with donationware. But people get PISSED when donationware turns paid. They don't jump for joy and open their wallets. If this is the case with donationware, why would it be different for freemium products?

<comment><USER8> Nono, don't get me wrong. The point with rich people (which I've reused because I thought it fit those conversations) is that even if you have millions in your bank account, you imagine businesses with their own 'pots'.

I.e. even if I can invest say £100,000 into this business to jumpstart it, I'll first see if it can make some money by itself, just as if I've have had nothing. So I won't buy the £5,000 hardware (just an example) until I made £5,000 profits. That means whatever expenses the business made are paid from the same pot — the one with money the business generated.

Maybe after the business reached a certain threshold (and thus proof of concept), these millionaires that I've known will properly _invest_.

If that still didn't make sense, imagine you'll be looking for investment. You won't go and ask for it until you've got proof. In the millionaire case, it just happens to be the same person who's becoming an investor.

Regarding the second bit, I'm saying this: it can also be freemium and at the same time a premium plan. Or more premium plans

<comment><USER3> IMO, the example would be clearer if you left off the cofounder bit. Otherwise it puts the focus on their relationship and makes the rich guy seem like a jerk.

I still don't see how this anecdote is particularly responsive to the various comments it was used in reply to. So you're saying millionaires want to grow businesses responsibly? Great! What does that have to do with whether you feel joy in paying them money — which was what my original comment was about?

<comment><USER8> Oh I understand what's unclear now. So here's what I'm trying to connect

1\. These rich people like to start lean (some of them) 2\. This way of conducting business gives equality of opportunity 3\. Therefore, these lean- starters will be drawn unto them and use them. Eventually, when they invest in their own ideas (remember what I said that it just so happens that the investor is themselves?), they bring their big money to this company

Makes sense now?

<comment><USER3> Honestly, not really. I've read it a couple times and run it by a friend, and we don't understand what you're getting at. But thanks for taking the time to try to explain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jamieson-becker We do something similar to this at Userify / ssh key management (disclaimer: I'm the founder/CEO):

We give away 20 servers for free -- no invoice, no credit card needed, nothing. Once you exceed 20 servers, we charge (it's about $70/month).

You'd think that 20 servers is way too much to give away, but actually about 76% of our servers are on the paid plan and a huge percentage of our customers come from the invitation referrals when people change companies or consult for multiple companies.

(Our pricing might be too low and our product might be a bit too technical and scare off a lot of people who might not even know what SSH is, but for now that acts as a filter and keeps our support costs low; it's working for us, although we'll probably lighten up a bit on the technical homepage in the near future.) Also, the SaaS product acts as a frictionless testing area for people who actually just want to deploy the on-premise version, which accounts for approximately 40% of our revenue.

Our customers like the product and we have grown with many of them from free to paid. We're growing a startup for the long haul and don't have to demonstrate any particular growth rate to anyone.

The advice in this article works. Build something that provides some useful utility to people, and give as much away as you can. Most people will not abuse it and will return the favor as they grow.

<comment><USER8> And that's the wonderful thing Jamieson, even if people would abuse it, you kicking them is a few clicks away. And given that one provides something of value, the premium plans will cover for them.

So so glad to see you winning with this "strategy" — it's not a strategy IMO, it's the forward way of living and conducting business. I'll send you an email, would like to connect!

> We're growing a startup for the long haul and don't have to demonstrate any > particular growth rate to anyone.

That's the ultimate level of power and freedom. I wish you well.

Ch Daniel

<comment> jamieson-becker > even if people would abuse it, you kicking them is a few clicks away

We take a pretty liberal approach to this :) there are a few companies on the platform now who just create a lot of companies and keep them all below 20 servers (that's pretty easy to monitor) but so far we haven't kicked anyone yet, and there's also a legitimate reason to do that (if you're an MSP and have multiple clients). We just send an email to clarify if we think it's an issue.

> I'll send you an email, would like to connect!

Sure thing - it's first.last @ userify! Great to meet you Ch Daniel and thanks for your nice comment!

<comment><USER8> I think you meant "who just create a lot of users" (...and keep them all below 20 servers)?

I got mad love for you for doing this. Just tweeted at you but sending you an email now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love the idea of being generous and having that come back to you. This notion not only works with products but it works in every other part of life. You may not believe in Karma but the vast majority of the good will we put out there will eventually come back to us, at least it is this humble engineers opinion.

As a little self promotion, and an example of this idea, I recently built an app that lets people listen to any article, it uses AI to convert the articles to Audio with some amazing sounding open source models. I decided to give folks up to 30 free article conversions per month and only charge after that, if they really love the product. You can try it here [https://articulu.com](https://articulu.com)

I may at some point be forced to lower that a bit because it does cost a bunch of money to run TensorFlow in the cloud, but trying my best to keep the karma goin.

<comment><USER8> I'm not religious but I love reading about the history and philosophy of religion. Piggybacking on what you said about Karma — it's the golden rule. The intersection of all religions, the bit that's in every. single. holy book.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do good and it'll come back to you — you're not the one to keep the bill.

As you said, it's something to be taken out generally in life. I wrote about it in another post, addressing publicly the tech CEO and how she/he should not keep the tab. Do have a read if you're interested: [https://chagency.co.uk/blog/general/dear-ceo-dont-keep- the-t...](https://chagency.co.uk/blog/general/dear-ceo-dont-keep-the-tab/)

(Please let me know if linking your own stuff is not ok on HackerNews, I just joined the community and it seems lovely)

I'd need the opposite of what Articulu is doing — transcribing my video's audio into written word. Had a look and it looks nice, will give it a try!

Let's connect, how can I reach you?

<comment><USER17> As long as your posts are useful and insightful I'm pretty sure it's allowed.

You can reach me right on the website, I put up contact info and it works.

Edit: excellent post by the way, loved it and shared it with some friends. That word of mouth thing is 100% true.

<comment><USER8> Very glad to hear that. Will get in touch now. Thanks for sharing it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This quote

"By that I mean the freemium model should offer the client the chance to grow — equality of opportunity — and if it does happen that they grow and become profitable, the SaaS starts charging based on that. In a sense, value-based pricing, or at least as much as it could get with a scalable model."

kinda implies that your client is a business ("become profitable"). We have teachers as primary users, and I don't think the general arguments apply to that category of users (although freemium is still a very popular pricing model).

</comment><comment><USER8> hi guys, I'm very humbled to have my content shared here. I'm very open to any kind of discussion around this topic. Feel free to reach me at email@example.com

<comment><USER19> Your description of Mailchimp's freemium plan is missing, or it doesn't load in.

<comment><USER3> Didn't load for me either, and frankly I find their offering to be maddening, not joy-inducing. Under 2k recipients: free. Over 2k: $780/yr (at least when I was looking at it). This is way too big a jump from free.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for letting me know. I was just mentioning MailChimp as the targeted audience (tech CEOs) most probably know about the freemium plan, so I didn't feel like expanding on that.

After I noticed it caused confusion, I added some extra comments in there as well.

I see it this way: I know a lot of rich people who like to start lean simply for the sake of seeing proof of concept. They have millions in their bank yet they ask their cofounder to chip in £5,000 on the idea.

So the company offering the product (MailChimp in this example) took the risk (and the cost associated) of seeing if the idea works. But then, what I say is that they should charge enough on the premium to cover for all the freemium.

Which MailChimp does. I know, $780/yr is a lot — but since they might help you start from 0, literally from ground level, I think it's reasonable for them to charge a lot. I don't know their niche so whether 780/yr is fair or not is up to them

But let me put it another way: if your mailing list is over 2000 people, aren't there more than $65/mo to be made, more than 8 cases out of 10?

<comment><USER3> > _if your mailing list is over 2000 people, aren 't there more than $65/mo to > be made_

If the click-through rate is around 10% and the conversion rate is around 5%, then depending on the price point (and whether selling subs or one-time), then quite possibly no. And even if I can clear $100 in extra revenue/month, paying more than half of that to an email service seems like too much. Factor in the cost of my time in building the emails, and I have to clear closer to $200/mo for this to make sense at all.

And I don't know the precise costs for the higher tiers, but after seeing this taste of their pricing model, I decided they weren't a good fit for me. If I ever end up as a subscriber, it will certainly be through gritted teeth, not the joy that you describe.

<comment><USER8> Just checked MailChimp and they've got free, $10/mo and up, $199/mo and up

I know it's the last thing you'd want to hear but maybe the gritted teeth bring the nitpick and resentment that I see through the posts

<comment><USER3> Looks like they have lowered the limit (500 email addresses instead of 2,000) and the pricing (10/mo instead of 60/mo). So the math is roughly the same as when I passed on it before.

As for nitpicking, I think you've got me beat with your last comment. Unfortunately you missed (or purposely omitted) the part about 500 addressees instead of 2,000, hence this reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Go further. Give away your entire code base as open source on github. If that will attract a community they will fix the bugs for you. And you can still sell your software to others.

Worried about huge corps stealing your lunch? Use AGPL and I got it straight from Mr Eben Moglen that the corps wont touch it with a 500 foot pole.

<comment><USER8> This comment has too many American insight I don't have and sounds sarcastic, not sure — if it's not though, let me know what you meant and I'm happy to have a conversation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you're in a niche where there are no freemium models/plans, is it still a good idea to offer one? It seems to me that many of the examples provided are of businesses in highly competitve spaces, where free alternatives likely already existed/were being offered by competitors already.

<comment><USER8> Depends on how able are you to offer that, without more background info it's harder to say. But then it also boils down to intent, just like I said in the article.

You might have created a blue ocean for yourself and say "I don't need to offer freemium". But exactly what I'm trying to reach in the written piece is this idea around the equality of opportunity — "If your intent is to create a win-win environment and give equality of opportunity so that eventually the next Leonardo da Vinci will come from under your rooftop (and he won't forget that), this is a way to solve the freemium-to-premium user conversion problem."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So in summary, give users lots for free and they'll feel like you're their friend and recommend you to their friends and happily pay you?

<comment><USER8> Yes and no. Give them free so they can start off the ground. When the 0.01% win (the Da Vinci example), they'll be more than happy to pay you.

Also give them free because word of mouth is on steroids then. To cover up for the big costs, charge the premium enough. That might not be feasible for everyone so in the short-term go for the classic approach. But once you can... boy you should do it

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love it, it's so much more selfless than the titles suggests... and everyone wins.

In retrospect it seems obvious, I suppose good ideas do.

</comment><comment><USER24> He lost me when he began talking about millionaires supporting orphans.

Wealthy people tend to give less as a percent of wealth.

But the general idea is solid.

</comment><comment><USER25> Make something useful that someone can trial and feel like they've had enough value from it to pay for it?

</comment><comment><USER26> Easy, limit their backpack space.

</comment><comment><USER27> flagged for being an empty page with a spinner.

<comment><USER8> my website might be slower now because of the influx of users but it definitely loads!

<comment><USER28> I believe they were referring to the fact that JavaScript needs to be enabled to read anything on the site, despite all the content actually being there. It's just hidden by some annoying _< div class="mauer-narrator-preloader"><div class="mauer-narrator-spinner"></div></div>_.

Maybe you think the spinner is a better experience than getting a glimpse of the partially-loaded page, but I feel like the browser successively displaying content is a much better progress indicator than some dummy image spinning in a circle.

<comment><USER8> It's a humble Wordpress theme but thank you for pointing it out — I'll check with my developer, see what can be done. Maybe switch to lazy loading</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OneCoin Ponzi scheme - <AUTHOR> Does anybody know what kind of MLM (Multi Level Marketing) software uses the following site http://www.OneLife.eu. The site is using PHP and MySQL server. I am asking because they want to make sure their users that their system is integrated with mining system. Do you have any additional info about it? <comment><USER2> this is obviously a scam</comment>


Why You Should Learn To Code Even As a Non-Technical Founder - <AUTHOR> http://liordegani.me/2013/01/14/why-you-should-learn-to-code-even-as-a-non-technical-founder/

<comment><USER2> As someone who once had the mindset of "I'll just find someone to build it for me" this post definitely hits some great points for anyone wanting to work on even a weekend project to consider.

Even learning some of the basics has made a huge difference in working with others for me. Being able to communicate and understand what a developer is talking about makes a world of difference when building something.</comment>


Big Google Product Announcement Coming April 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/26/big-google-product-announcement-coming-april-7/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, same day as my Birthday.

I hope it's something new (and not the java thing), that would be a nice present from Google!</comment>


Learning Romanian - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/learning-romanian <comment><USER2> I've had the most success with Spaced Repetition Systems when I create the cards myself, and the cards are all material that I am _reviewing_ , not something I have never seen before.

I think this makes a large difference for foreign language learning. I never focus on learning words. I always learn words in the context of a sentence. I choose my sentences by taking them from things people say, books I read, videos I watch, etc...This is especially helpful because when I review the sentences in the SRS sometime later, I will read the sentence and almost always recall the broader context in which I learned it (the page in the book, the scene in the movie). This works really well for learning how to use words (and idioms especially) in their proper context.

Mnemosyne is my SRS of choice: [http://mnemosyne-proj.org/](http://mnemosyne- proj.org/). Very customizable, but a lot easier to get started with than Anki. It's a local app, so no Internet needed, like Memrise. The one downside is no good mobile app version.

<comment><USER3> Yes, context is _everything_. That's one thing that really strikes me about learning this way, the lack of context. But that should be fixable.

<comment><USER4> Hey, it sounds like you might be interested in my webapp for reading to learn foreign languages: [http://readlang.com](http://readlang.com)

It lets you:

\- Upload texts to read, even entire novels, or read any webpage using a bookmarklet.

\- Click on words or drag across phrases to translate them.

\- Every word or phrase you translate is stored to your account, along with the context sentence, to learn with flashcards.

\- Flashcards are prioritised using word frequency lists so you learn the most useful words first, they also use a SRS similar to Anki to schedule future appearances of a word.

Please give it a try, and if you are interested it could be cool to share some ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very much worth reading is this post by gwern:

[http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition)

(I've been reading that and the tons of references from there pretty much all day since writing that post).

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, best approach to learn a new language is to read a book in parallel in both languages. I tend to use novels that were translated in both languages, this way I won't get into trouble with the way a particular writer uses the language. Imagine trying to learn English by reading Faulkner or Mark Twain.

For e.g, say that you are Dutch and want to learn Romanian, you buy a novel by Dostoyevsky (since this was written in Russian you can be sure it was translated in both languages) that you read before (this way you won't pay much attention to the story) and read it in parallel Dutch/Romanian.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't speak a single word of Romanian, but it seems similar to italian and a little french. I can read a newspaper and 'get' the meaning of the articles, for instance. It's an amusing language, not slavic at all like its neighbouring countries. Good luck learning Romanian! Side note: the Danish have a similar word to 'gezellig': 'hygge'.

<comment><USER3> I know a fair bit of Polish and keep seeing Slavic influences, but that could - now that I think about it - have been just as easy the other way around.

Makes you wonder if Russian picked up 'Da' from the South or if that somehow crossed over from the North. Most other Roman language use totally unrelated terms for 'yes' or general affirmation.

<comment><USER7> In the article you mention that Romanian isn't the hardest thing you've learned. Has any of the other European languages you know (Dutch, German, Polish) been more difficult?

<comment><USER8> I've often heard that Finnish and Hungarian are probably the hardest european languages to learn. I don't know any, but I've got some Hungarian friends and the few bits I've been teached don't show the opposite :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You need to make sure what you're learning is actually what you think you're learning; The blog post says "sobolanul" means "rat" but it actually means "the rat", "sobolan" is "rat".

<comment><USER10> That's just the convention in how words are presented to learners in different languages, I think, and it's surely obvious to anyone with even a few minutes of exposure to Romanian that -ul is one of the enclitics for the definite article.

Anyway, I don't know that's even a useful distinction on its own. The difference between "the X" and "X" doesn't map very well across languages, even within Europe. English drops the article in many circumstances in which Romance languages use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use Memrise for the spaced repetition part. In the courses that I'm taking, the mnemonic techniques (associating pictures or whatever to new words) are just flat out horrible.</comment>


Marissa Mayer first interview since Yahoo! - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/business/marissa-mayer-corner-office.html <comment><AUTHOR> > _We got great results for shareholders, we got great results for advertisers > and our users and our employees_

As a spectator who remembers waves of Yahoo! layoffs, I find it difficult to agree with Ms Mayer saying they got great results for employees.

<comment><USER2> From dictionary.com:

1\. unusually or comparatively large in size or dimensions: A great fire destroyed nearly half the city.</comment></comment>