Are you the consumer or the product?
(Why there is no such thing as “free”)
How you fund your business determines what kind of businesses you build.
This week Gary Vaynerchuk published, on Medium, an insightful piece titled “Make Money: Don’t Raise Money”. He was speaking of founders building a valuation rather than building a business.
This same week I was asked why we don’t provide the Blackbullion financial education platform, currently available on 20 campuses to almost 350,000 students, for free.
These are different angles of the same challenge.

Blackbullion’s online learning platform supports the financial health of young people through quality, independent and authoritative financial education. We charge institutions a nominal fee for a year’s access for all current and prospective students as well as staff.
We support international students and care leavers, care givers and nurses — we provide resources to help those students who feel debt-related stress and support Student Service departments to help all students access the kind of learning students are, in their hundreds or thousands, crying out for.
As we go into our third year providing this critical life skill there are still some who believe we should be free (I’ve literally been told “companies that charge for their service are evil”)
But seriously folks — free is never free and if you can’t see where the money is being made then you are the product being sold. Either a company is selling to you or they are selling access to you to advertisers.
We charge to ensure that quality remains, that independence is maintained and to ensure that the only stakeholders we are beholden to are our clients and users.
Enhancing financial education on campus is at least as valuable to the university as it is to the student.
Universities who deploy us on campus see reduced numbers of “repeat offender” students who repeatedly seek financial assistance after those students engage with our budgeting and debt modules. What’s the value of that?
Universities who use us as part of their recruitment and admissions team help students, and their parents, manage financial expectations and make more informed decisions about Higher education. That means a student’s expectation is more aligned with the student experience. What’s the value of that?
Being OFFA accountable we are able to support the widening participation ambition of our partner universities by demystifying debt and putting the investment that is university into context for students who are first in family or come from more diverse or disadvantaged backgrounds. What’s the value of that?
And some believe all this can be provided for free.
I was 6 when I learned that free is never free and our subscription model aligns with Blackbullion’s company values of integrity and making an impact to genuinely change lives. The alternative is to make money off ads and sell data to financial institutions to push products that students neither need nor want.
Producing a world class platform with engaging and independent learning to support young people in developing key 21st century skills is not a cheap enterprise.
Technologists, product people, marketers, animators, editors, instructional designers, fact checkers — not to mention rent, pensions, and other expenses cost money. Gambling companies and payday lenders would happily fund us for a year… we’d be free!! But at what cost?
So yeah, bringing Blackbullion to your campus to support your students, to raise their financial health and support their mental health, to maximise retention and attainment costs a bit of money — chances are it’s a lot less than you think and the return on your investment will be far greater.
Show me how someone spends their money and I’ll tell you their values and priorities. What are yours?
