Commoditizing your products complement as a business strategy.
Ever wonder why Hubspot gives away most of their software for free? Their CRM, Sales Automation, Calendar applications are all available for users without charge. Joel Spolsky, Founder of Stack Overflow, identified what would be recognized as a major pattern in technology business in his post ‘Strategy letter V’ (in June 2012) – “companies seek to secure a chokepoint or quasi-monopoly in products composed of many necessary & sufficient layers by dominating one layer while fostering so much competition in another layer above or below its layer that no competing monopolist can emerge, prices are driven down to marginal costs elsewhere in the stack, total price drops & increases demand, and the majority of the consumer surplus of the final product can be diverted to the quasi-monopolist.”
