That's a great interview on HIBT and you bring up a great question, as it's possible the way they explained it makes it sound like that's an 'expected' freemium

That's a great interview on HIBT and you bring up a great question, as it's possible the way they explained it makes it sound like that's an 'expected' freemium user-to-paid percentage across the board. It really depends on the product/service, company size/funding and the marketplace(s) that your customers find your product. I operate a few SaaS services with a freemium plan and we're very, very far north of 3-5% of paying customers from our customer base. But one of the many differences is I'm operating small software services. Dropbox is very different in that regard and there's just no apples to apples comparison between those two business models. But 3-5% is not something you should believe is set in stone as 'normal' for all businesses in all marketplaces. It, as many things do, comes down to "it depends..." It's possible to have a much, much higher percentage of your customers paying even when offering a freemium model.