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;
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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.)
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Hosting & storage (SaaS model)
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Staggered update releases - a pro plan for the latest updated version and community releases 6-months later (the SeaFile model)
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Extra-features that are proprietary - note taking core is free but if you want to add certain extensions these are value add.
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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.
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corporate/enterprise consulting support (probably not sustainable though.)
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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!