Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: A Cautionary Tale from the Land of Free SaaS - Ideas in Progress: Meaning, Mischief & Mayhem

Once upon a time, in a land awash with forms, burnout, and administrative despair, a kind and noble delegation appeared at the gates of the mental health village. They came not to conquer, they said, but to offer gifts.

“Our platform is free,” they declared, “utterly, totally, benevolently free.”
“No ads. No charges. No traps. Just peace and productivity.”

Naturally, the villagers were skeptical.
They had seen such messengers before: bearing dashboards, metrics, outcome trackers — all beautifully wrapped, only to find more forms inside.

But these new messengers were different. They understood. They even quoted research. They were, in every sense, fluent in the therapist’s language of exhaustion. And they came not just with technology — but with a mission.

The Offer: Help, Not Heft

The plan was ingenious:

Therapists would get free tools.
Insurers would pay — not from the therapist’s pocket, but from the glorious kingdom of “savings.”
Everyone would win. Especially the therapists. Especially.

Except… a few old-timers in the village scratched their heads.

“Hang on,” said one, “have we not heard this before? When someone says ‘we don’t charge you, we charge the system’, do they not soon find themselves answering to the system?”

The Fine Print (Beautifully Typeset in Serif)

The gift, it turns out, came with a contract of sorts:

More data, please.
More proof of outcomes.
More efficiency.
More compliance.

Because while it looked like a therapist’s tool, it was ultimately a payer-facing platform in therapist’s clothing.

And slowly, the questions began to grow louder:

Who defines “better outcomes”?
Who benefits when those outcomes are optimized?
And who, at the end of the day, owns the levers of power — the therapist, or the one holding the reimbursement strings?

Reflections from a Curious Observer

Now, let me be clear. I admire the ambition. I truly do.

The language is elegant.
The intentions sound noble.
And I’m sure the deck looks stunning in front of investors.

But I worry. Just a little.

I worry that in trying to rescue therapists from the weight of admin, we may be exchanging one burden for another:

🧾 The invisible burden of systems-driven care.

I worry that “free” may come to mean subtle allegiance — not to therapists, but to institutions that reward quantifiability over connection.

And I wonder if there might be a different path.

A Humble Alternative

What if we built tools that therapists chose to pay for?
Not because they were forced to. But because they saw value.
What if the product wasn’t “optimised for outcomes” — but designed for depth, reflection, and sustainability?

What if therapists remained the customer, not the conduit?

I prefer building something along those lines. Not to compete, but to quietly ask a different question:

“What does real support look like — when no one’s watching the metrics?”

Curtain Call

So yes, beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Not because the gift is poisoned.
But because it might come with a different kind of price — one paid not in money, but in sovereignty.

And if we are to reshape mental health care for the better, perhaps the first step is knowing who the gift is really for.