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.