3 ms·

As someone else put it elsewhere, 'the first taste is always free'... Companies have been giving away software to college courses for as long as there's been a

As someone else put it elsewhere, 'the first taste is always free'... Companies have been giving away software to college courses for as long as there's been an industry. It's a long-term marketing strategy based on the idea that if you give free software to 200 students (with limits on how it can be used so they can't make money using it), then inside ten years many of them will end up in positions where they're asked to recommend software and yours is the first they ever used. Altruistic it is not.

pchristensen 17y ago
Just because it's business doesn't mean it's not altruistic. pg does YC because he wants young hackers to do interesting work and solve the money problem, but he wants a return. Joel wants people to manage their time and get their work done in an organized way, and he believes in that so much that he wrote a product that does it. I'm sure he wouldn't care if you used any great product to track your time, but there's only one he can offer for free.