He doesn't but that's because he's talking about a model where you give away something for free and charge for a better or more featureful version of it.
Charging everyone (even a nominal amount) from day zero is great but has a narrow application - it mostly works when people perfectly understand what your product does. In the case of pinboard, 'del.icio.us minus the suck plus some other stuff'. The original del.icio.us would have got exactly nowhere charging users from day 1.
The original delicious wasn't trying to pursue a 'freemium' business model, though. It was pursuing the 'grow big fast; get bought' business model, and caught it.
I think for the lowly startup that is actually trying to extract money from customers, extracting it right at the outset is an attractive choice, even if it's a token amount just to filter out spammers and deadbeats.
Charging everyone (even a nominal amount) from day zero is great but has a narrow application - it mostly works when people perfectly understand what your product does. In the case of pinboard, 'del.icio.us minus the suck plus some other stuff'. The original del.icio.us would have got exactly nowhere charging users from day 1.