This is also the stated rationale for Cloudflare’s generous free tier. They build loyalty with hobby and side projects, and engineers take that familiarity to work with them.
DigitalOcean also had a strategy of going after the little guys/early phases of companies with their 5$ offering and lots of good free material/tutorials.
yes, Slack and github strategy. After Slack got big, it shrunk what it provides for open-source communities though. So, expect Cloudflare eventually switch.
