“The pros, students, athletes can join the platform — we're never going to disrupt with a paywall the interaction between the two. It's a touchstone, a third rail. You change that and it's a fundamental tenant of our business.”

Identify your non-negotiable free tier first — it protects the network effect core

Every freemium strategy has at least one non-negotiable: the feature or user type that makes the whole product work. For V1 Sports, the coach-student relationship cannot be paywalled — doing so would destroy the network. Revisiting strategy every 18 months does not mean everything is on the table. Identifying the real third rails early focuses re-evaluation energy on the genuinely moveable parts.