What is Logseq's business model?

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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Great point. Business use is definitely where the money’s at. Just want to make sure we stay true to our mission and the original community that got us here! Never want to be yet another “business wiki” :joy:

There is a lot of overlap between business use and in our mission of providing teams and communities a place to collaborate on knowledge and build shared understanding. Definitely open to more ideas here! We’re still figuring it out :slight_smile:

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Remnote is bug prone with their development cycle and roadmap not clear…

Maybe this has been already mentioned here, but I highly recommend the WordPress business module.

  • Keep the software free for people who will use local storage (or their own external server, cloud storage).
  • Offer a paid cloud subscription with syncing across multiple OS/devices.
  • Maybe make the mobile app a one-time paid service (per major version) but keep reasonable and accessible to the majority.
  • Make some advanced plugins as a paid service (some as a one-time, some recurring depending on the type of service that plugin offer).
  • Make some well thought-out themes as a one-time paid service.
  • Allow for Sponsor memberships (for users which allows them to access early versions, votes on the priority of new features to implement…etc.)
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Have you looked into making this a DAO? #decentralization

go to the niche “collaboration tool” for teams

100x yes! I can’t understand why I can’t have namespaces=different repos and share my knowledge with coworkers. Also, another repo for family things I could share with my wife. I believe many non-tech users would love something like that with a paid cloud storage version.

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