Louis Bidou

To Paul Graham, if you are a startup founder, you can be as nice as you want with your customers, as long as you work hard on your growth to compensate.

Here is the math behind.

Suppose your company is making $1000 a month now, and you've made something so great that it's growing at 5% a week. Two years from now, you'll be making $160k a month. Suppose now that you only extract half as much from users as you could, meaning $500 a month now, but that you're able to grow 6% a week instead of 5%. Two years from now, you'll be making $214k a month versus $160k.

Startups usually win by making something so great that people recommend it to their friends. So focus on growth.

Source: http://paulgraham.com/safe.html