What is Logseq's business model?

Hi @nikolayko, great first post!

Here are my thoughts:

  • Roam for teams is a cool idea, but seems totally wrong for the Logseq community and current product focus. Logseq’s current advantage is open source, user control, plain text, and local files. It attracts people that want security, privacy, and are willing to sacrifice ease-of-use compared to Roam. Doing anything for teams will be expotentially harder with plain text instead of database-only, client-side encryption and privacy, and local files rather than online-only.

  • Everything else you said about possible pitfalls rings true. However, there is one missing piece of info, which is that Logseq has some financial backers who fund the current Logseq development team, and we have no idea what’s involved there, how much the devs get for how much work (is it a sustainable salary or not?), so we don’t know how much additional revenue is needed, what the backers’ main goals are (it might not be primarily profit), etc.

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hi, thank you very much for the insights!

TBH I didn’t expect that so many ppl come to give us suggestions on logseq’s business model, so thank you all :smiley:
I started to think about monetization since I got some investment seed from some friends last year. You know, they support me to keep it open source and make it a really good app first. Even though I told them that logseq might not make money for the first 2 ~ 3 years, I still need to think about it to make the team sustainable.

The long-term goal for logseq is to create a privacy-first platform for knowledge sharing and management, we want to make it distractions-free to write and connect any thoughts, work together with other communities to improve the way how young students can access the knowledge, and group together to contribute to their interests. So, it’s not just a notetaking app or a “cheaper roam research”.

The different thing about logseq being an outliner notetaking app is that we care about privacy (local-first, encryption) and it works well with markdown and org-mode files, but still provides similar features as roam because both logseq and roam are using the same database.

The donations might be working for one person if we really keep pushing users to donate us, :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: but it will definitely not work for the whole team because we already have 6 full-time developers now, there’re VCs getting in touch with us, we don’t expect this so early, so we’ll talk with them when the app gets more stable.

I’m not sure how many users are going to pay for additional features (publishing, sync, whiteboard etc), the top priority for us now is to polish the features and make it stable for daily usage, if people really love it and want to pay for it, that’s great, and if people think the free version already works for them, that’s super awesome! What I believe is that the more values we create for the users, the more chance this project can survive compared to the other apps.

As for logseq for teams and real-time collaboration, it’s on our roadmap, we’ll be there but it might take more than one year.

The reason we open sourced logseq’s frontend is that we hope logseq can be used and developed in the next several decades, just like other OSS projects such as Tiddlywiki and Emacs/Vim. Also, we’ve stopped developing new features for the last two months, to make sure logseq having a small core and most features can be implemented as plugins later.

I made a lot of mistakes then I did my projects. Most of them died :frowning: but some still alive :slight_smile:

You have to fail to succeed, right? Again, thank you very much for the helpful insights! We’ll think more about the business and trying our best to make logseq a really good app.

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6 full-time developers — it’s a huge team, my congrats! Now I understands why you roll out features so fast and keep steady pace

I’m not sure how many users are going to pay for additional features (publishing, sync, whiteboard etc)

“How many” in terms of percentages (freemium\paid) or in absolute digits?

The long-term goal for logseq is to create a privacy-first platform for knowledge sharing and management, we want to make it distractions-free to write and connect any thoughts, work together with other communities to improve the way how young students can access the knowledge, and group together to contribute to their interests. It sounds like a mission, it inspires, really. And it’s lifetime thing, or for decades

I was writing about a go-to-market strategy, which is for 2-3y only. “cheaper roam research” — is a strategy only.
Technically savvy tend to confuse misaim and strategy. I did it as well.

improve the way how young students can access the knowledge

Young students will not pay, they usually stick with free tiers. Institutions could pay, you should take a look at product like Quizleett, and other LMS systems which are sold to Universities

There’re VCs getting in touch with us

Right now if you have money for development, the only reason why you should bother yourself about getting in touch with VCs — is getting real advice about go-to-market strategy and ongoing support on this road. And PR, and connections with enterprise companies whom you can pitch the product. Working with VC it’s kine a training how to make a business, because they a business guys.

Guys, you are making an awesome product
I’m trying help you so it can last for decades and be helpful for humankind

And for me as well :wink:

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6 full-time developers — it’s a huge team, my congrats! Now I understands why you roll out features so fast and keep steady pace

Thanks, three developers joined the team recently, love all of them!

“How many” in terms of percentages (freemium\paid) or in absolute digits?

Percentages, I don’t expect 2% because we plan to make most of the local-only features free.

I was writing about a go-to-market strategy, which is for 2-3y only. “cheaper roam research” — is a strategy only.
Technically savvy tend to confuse misaim and strategy. I did it as well.

Totally agree, but we don’t want to market it as roam-like, most people came to logseq because of roam, and it’s great to attract some awesome users in the beginning, but we want to build the trust that our users will use logseq because it’s logseq :smiley:

Young students will not pay, they usually stick with free tiers. Institutions could pay, you should take a look at product like Quizleett, and other LMS systems which are sold to Universities

I’ll look into Quizleett and other LMS systems, thanks! I agree that young students normally will not pay and it makes sense, the public knowledge produced by the users is the real value for human beings, we hope logseq can help for creating and share the knowledge.

Right now if you have money for development, the only reason why you should bother yourself about getting in touch with VCs — is getting real advice about go-to-market strategy and ongoing support on this road. And PR, and connections with enterprise companies whom you can pitch the product. Working with VC it’s kine a training how to make a business, because they a business guys.

Totally agreed!

Again thank you very much for the detailed input, hope you enjoy the “log” time!

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You are welcome

But it seems that you already know all this stuff without my input :slight_smile:

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Certainly not, I’m exactly the kind of developer who tends to confuse misaim and strategy, I took some notes :wink:

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Hi,

I listened to the meetup call and regarding the monetization question I had some suggestions;

With Open Source; some monetization options could be from;

  • online cloud synchronization & encryption (people pay for the latest encryption and security of their notes, and the ability to choose where their data is being held (whether they want it compliant with GDPR, California, China, Canada, etc.)

  • Hosting & storage (SaaS model)

  • Staggered update releases - a pro plan for the latest updated version and community releases 6-months later (the SeaFile model)

  • Extra-features that are proprietary - note taking core is free but if you want to add certain extensions these are value add.

  • Donation badge - code the program so that a badge in the top right or left hand corner of the desktop app or web interface displays “non-donor” (with a frowny face) to the user if they did not donate, and a “donor” badge (with a happy face or something) if they did.

  • corporate/enterprise consulting support (probably not sustainable though.)

  • Finally, there is one that I’m interested and like to socialize; form a co-operative platform - ie. something like how it is described here: https://platform.coop/ - the benefit would be that by charging an annual membership fee to join the co-op, you receive the ability to vote on the direction of the organization, and because it’s a recurring fee you gain sustainable income. (The downside is Venture Capital would have less control over the ability to sell or monetize the software (they could still participate of course in a multi-stakeholder co-operative, but this might be a problem down the line anyway with open source and venture capital (ex. OwnCloud split into NextCloud because the founder of OwnCloud was not happy with venture capital over-monetizing the open source software, and so he created NextCloud to compete with Owncloud. Another example is MySQL and MariaDB.)

Just some thoughts/suggestions; I’m happy to see this software grow so quickly!

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Consider Wordpress’s evolution and monetization as inspiration:

  • They’ve monetized hosting at a reasonable price point for small blogs. This would probably map pretty well to the average Logseq user’s case. I’m not sure there is an analogous situation for the higher-cost tiers with Logseq though, perhaps multi-user & team scenarios.
  • Their original offering of a capable self-hosted open source tool is still available and useful and can still be used to escape their hosted & paid offering which provides piece of mind to users.
  • Their Jetpack offering provides an avenue for monetizing self-hosted users using features developed for their paid/hosted users. Not sure if there is an analog for Logseq, but worth keeping in mind.

On the one hand, Wordpress has a lot more room to scale the offering. Some customers need to serve more page views, some need larger teams, some need more customization, commerce, etc. On the other hand, more people take notes than write blogs.

I think hosted web app + easy sync and backup between desktop and mobile apps is a good foundation and probably worth $50 year to a lot of people even if self-hosting of those things is possible. The mobile app itself is another avenue for monetization, particularly on iOS (where most of business is).

I personally find the fact that you already have six devs and are entertaining calls from VCs makes Logseq less attractive. It suggests that a financially sustainable offering may include less user freedom than it could with a more modest cost structure and gradual evolution. The fact that it is open-source softens the landing for users if the businesses goes away, not so much if it lingers or changes dramatically, and not so much if basic features (like mobile access) aren’t available in the open source offering. It’s not my project though. I wish you well.

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I want to echo how important I think it is for a project that wants to be community oriented to spend time considering AT integration. Logseq has an opportunity to be leader in many ways, and pushing the envelope for PKMs in regards to accessibility would not only help a variety of people that too often are left behind or completely forgotten in software development, but also give the platform a distinct advantage over other offerings by broadening its possible use cases.

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(As a student) I’m a huge fan of systems like “the cost would be … bucks - pay as much as you can/want, even if it’s just 1$…”. I don’t know if this would work for logseq, regarding scale and user group… (But I know some small projects, e.g. the e-mail-host https://immerda.ch which successfully operate upon this principle)

In the case of immerda, they say "we would appreciate if you gave us 1 ‰ of your income, or at least 25 bucks a year. If you use group-addresses or something the like, it could be a bit more…

I wanted to add another open source company to check out: cocalc.com. Everything is 100% open source. The reason to pay is that they provide useful features, including storage, automatic backups, and collaboration.

Logseq would be a really good fit for the classroom too, even if it would target a different type of classes. Instructors could collaborate with students on writing, students could upload homework and the instructor could add comments, … Universities and colleges have tight budgets in 2021, unlike businesses, but it’s a big market. I’ve used cocalc to teach and I could see myself using Logseq. There’s no way you’d be able to sell directly to universities (they go with companies like Microsoft) but individual instructors would be open to it. The fact that Logseq is a browser app with zero setup makes a big difference.

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I work at a university and see potential for logseq in two ways. Firstly, by implementing spaced repetition (a la remnote) to help students consolidate learning, and secondly by promoting it as an “assistive” technology, eg to help students with ADHD to organise themselves.

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I am willing to pay. I think developers should be compensated (I agree there are exceptions - students, people who need a scholarship).
I don’t have the skills to know how to go from source code to app, and there are probably other people like me. So one thing I’m paying for would be up-to-date secure apps. I also agree with paying for extra features, like syncing or publishing or backups. Support and custom queries are other examples of things I would pay extra for.

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Based on the Discord #questions discussion of 2021-08-09, it seems that one key element of Logseq’s business model will be users paying for synced storage space on Logseq servers. But the Logseq team does not want to limit their upside to sync, but also to include payment for certain features. So how about having 1) paid storage, and 2) requiring payment for commercial licenses/use of any Logseq apps, but still keeping them all open source? Then the team has an incentive to improve the core Logseq app, but can still be compensated for it.

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I also work at a university and would to have a collaborative space were we could build out a collection of linked notes over the course of a semester. I probably would also have student keep their on private notes, but it would great to have a place where students could share out selected notes and we could make out learning visible to ourselves.

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Hi. I’ve been exploring this, and have a small amount of funding for a project. However, I’ll mainly be focusing on remnote as a tool because it has good capabilities for students to share notes. One could only do this in logseq via a shared github repository, and teaching students how to use github (or other git platforms) would be too steep a learning curve. Unless you can think of an easy way to share notes while using logseq?

Thank you for the kindness. We’re working on real-time collaboration so that people don’t have to know git or github, it might take us 3 months to build a version for testing.

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That would be awesome!

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I agree - that would be great. I’d be happy to help test once you get to that point

My 2 cents: today logseq users are your early adopters, you may have a revenue source from them (just like the donation today), but to maintain a business you will need business users. Companies spend more than individuals.

Most people do not know but Atlassian Confluence and JIRA are open-sourced (or at least started as open-source). They are very successful. Most users today use their cloud version that is reasonably priced ($10 for a small team).

I would invest in paid features for teams. I have paid for confluence in different projects/teams and I believe logseq can become a good Confluence alternative. It would be even better if a beefed-up TODOs that becomes a light JIRA alternative for teams. I certainly would pay for it as I did for Confluence in the past.

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