Author has good advice, all come down be a good sales person and act quick. Business is business, don't tango around, enough foreplay is enough.
Though I question 1) whether he already have a very strong network connection to begin with, and 2) looking at some of the most successful companies today, many of them were free product.
Well, think about it: selling frobnobs to average consumers at a profit margin of 1% is difficult and risky. But if you can sell fribfrob-as-a-service to the corporate executives that run bigcorps that already successfully sell frobnobs to average consumers, pooling large sums of money together in corporate coffers, then you can do a lot less selling for a lot more profit.
It's like running a landscaping business: you don't go to the poor side of the tracks and offer to mow small lawns for 50 cents. You go to the people who live by the country club and offer to mow big lawns for $50.
I guess so. If your product is expensive (for example, running "big data analytic" it makes sense to target at big corporate users, whereas companies like DropBox were competing with other big SaaS or on-premise solutions and they had to gain popularity via average consumers by offering free service at the beginning.
Though I question 1) whether he already have a very strong network connection to begin with, and 2) looking at some of the most successful companies today, many of them were free product.