My experience with free (as in beer) software and services is that it's usually offered as a "strategic offering", maybe as an attempt to commoditize your complement(?) but I'm speculating here. The downside is that the wider business does not care that much about your software. It needs to work, but just enough that customers don't use your complement. And critically, when it comes to prioritization of resources (especially the most senior people who could mentor you), they would rather put their best people in other parts of the business.
I've become of the mindset that if you want to build best-in-class software with a best-in-class team, you should see if you can draw a direct line from the product to the revenue, or at least the core mission of the business.
My experience with free (as in beer) software and services is that it's usually offered as a "strategic offering", maybe as an attempt to commoditize your complement(?) but I'm speculating here. The downside is that the wider business does not care that much about your software. It needs to work, but just enough that customers don't use your complement. And critically, when it comes to prioritization of resources (especially the most senior people who could mentor you), they would rather put their best people in other parts of the business.
I've become of the mindset that if you want to build best-in-class software with a best-in-class team, you should see if you can draw a direct line from the product to the revenue, or at least the core mission of the business.