Freemium relies on word-of-mouth, user referrals, and referral bonuses, along with paidadvertising, to grow the user base and generate revenues. With a pure freemium model,there are no salespeople. Consider messaging software provider Slack Technologies. By2016, a pure freemium model had driven Slack’s growth to 2.3 million monthly activeusers in just two years. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield initially predicted, “I think we canget away without having a sales team in any kind of traditional way probably forever.”Yet today, as Slack’s business has evolved, the company has a rapidly growing sales force. Other freemium companies, including Dropbox, Zoom, and the more mature LinkedIn,also have teams of inside and field salespeople selling their products.