Is Offering A Free Plan Worth The Hassle?

This week on FounderQuest, the guys talk about their decision to offer a free plan alongside the paid plans for Honeybadger and how it impacted the overall business. Josh is also back shares the hottest of takes from his recent trip to Nashville to attend RubyConf.

As usual, the show goes off the rails and talks about flying, Ben’s Eye of Sauron approach to fiscal management and an acquisition strategy based around companies named after honey badgers.

Full Transcript:
Josh:               Oh yeah, I got first-class back from RubyConf. I forget what it cost, but it was like too cheap to pass up, so I splurged a little bit.

Ben:                Yeah, I love me first-class, especially on the way back.

Josh:               It was nice. Yeah.

Ben:                Yeah. You're wiped out. You're tired. You just need to crash.

Josh:               Yeah. I was hungry and they had food. It wasn't a lot of food granted, but it was better than no food.

Ben:                So I've read on travel blogs that the guideline is, if it's less than a dollar per minute of flight time, then it's worth it to spend the extra. So you get a deal like that.

Starr:              That's interesting.

Ben:                Go for it.

Josh:               Yeah. I need to start making that calculation more and make sure I'm getting the most out of my Honeybadger expense card for real.

Starr:              Whoa.

Josh:               That the handbook-

Ben:                Yes.

Josh:               ...grants me.

Starr:              Wait, what's this? I must have glossed over that part of our new company handbook that Ben wrote?

Ben:                Yeah, our handbook says that every employee in the US gets a company issued credit card and you can use it at your discretion.

Starr:              Oh my goodness. Cha ching.

Ben:                Yeah, totally.

Starr:              That's what that is. I wondered what that thing in my wallet was.

Ben:                Of course-

Josh:               Well, it doesn't have to be burning a hole anymore.

Ben:                Of course, you also have to deal with the part of our code of conduct policy that talks about how we do financial reviews of all of our credit card statements, or in other words, Ben, looks at every line item of every credit card statement like, "Hey, did you really need to spend it?"

Josh:               I already know that Ben is like, I already assumed that Ben is watching, like, actively watching the credit card statement in real time. Don't you get notifications or something Ben?

Ben:                I have, yes, I have Amex configured to alert me whenever a purchase happens that's over $500.

Starr:              Oh my goodness. You know who you are, Ben?

Ben:                What?

Starr:              You're probably not going to like this. I've been reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time, finally. It's like the Eye of Sauron, right. But for credit card, for financial-

Josh:               The eye of Amex.

Ben:                Do you think Sauron was a micro manager or did he delegate?

Starr:              He was definitely a micro manager. He was directly controlling everybody in the army.

Josh:               Right, yeah.

Starr:              As soon as he died or whatever, like his armies just dissipated.

Ben:                Right.

Starr:              So yeah, I also have got the first-class upgrades a couple of times. I'm sorry Ben. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. I don't really think you're like Sauron. I just thought it was too funny to not say.

Ben:                I don't know. Being compared to Sauron, that's actually kind of cool.

Josh:               Bad ass.

Starr:              I mean he's very, very capable manager that person.

Ben:                That's true. He didn't do a lot of management.

Josh:               Yeah, very successful right up until the end.

Ben:                Up until the end yeah.

Starr:              Yeah. He just took on too much VC cash.

Starr:              So how was the actual conference, Josh? You went to RubyConf. You decided to go old school and you took a bunch of tee shirts with you, I think, right?

Josh:               Yeah, it was good. I took a duffle bag of tee shirts this time. Not something I had to check. It was carry on. It was kind of fun. We'd moved to just like taking virtual, you know, we take our business cards that have little links to get tee shirts on them most of the time, but it's fun to have the actual swag at the conference and hand them out and stuff. Yeah, it felt like old times.

Starr:              How'd you feel like the conference was in terms of attendance and the talks and all that?

Josh:               It was great. It was, obviously it was sold out. Lots of people there. The talks that I saw were good. Honestly, I did mostly the hallway track while I was there. I think I probably only attended six talks or so, maybe five or six, but I got to catch up-

Ben:                How was the game night?

Josh:               Game night was great. I forget how many people actually showed up, but it was a full room. I think they had like eight to 10 tables or something and they were all filled at one point. So yeah, full house. We had a little swag table, so I got to put my shirts out with the other sponsors. Ruby Together and BackerKit were both sponsors.

Starr:              Oh, so we sponsored the game night?

Josh:               And Sidekiq yeah, we did.

Starr:              Was that an official conference thing or is that a side thing?

Josh:               It was official this time. Normally it's, I think we did it at RailsConf I think earlier this year.

Ben:              &nbs...