
Toxic Virality: When Your Best Growth Asset Starts Billing You
Midjourney once shut off its own free trials to survive its own virality. That inversion explains why freemium is dying, and who gets to inherit it.

Midjourney once shut off its own free trials to survive its own virality. That inversion explains why freemium is dying, and who gets to inherit it.

Much of what AI startups report as recurring revenue is consulting work in disguise, and when the forward deployed engineers leave, the ARR leaves with them.

Starbucks holds $1.6 billion in customer float and effectively runs a mid-sized bank. The deeper truth: most companies back into banking defensively, and that crutch eventually caps their valuation.

The grid interconnection queue has replaced chip allocation as AI's binding constraint. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are becoming energy companies because whoever controls the electrons controls the frontier.

Intercom now charges $0.99 per resolution instead of per seat. Salesforce bills $2 per conversation. The per-seat SaaS model that built a trillion-dollar industry is fracturing as AI agents replace human operators.

When AI agents become software's primary users, seat-based pricing collapses, engagement metrics invert, and B2B marketing shifts from persuading humans to optimizing for machine comprehension.

Tesla's decision to open its Supercharger network wasn't generosity, it was a calculated platform play that transformed a hardware moat into an ecosystem that extracts value from every competitor vehicle on the road.