What is Logseq's business model?

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Branching off of this and other similar posts in this thread, while Roam Research may have attracted a particular consumer group with their product. I have always felt the following. but didn’t take the time until now to communicate this here or on Obsidian’s forum.

Immediately after coming coming across tools like Obsidian, Logseq, Athen’s Research etc., who have built on tools like tools Tiddly Wiki and others, just more user-friendly for the average user could take off around the community of people who rely on “assistive technology” on a daily basis. Not only for their features whom the stated community would find very useful, but specifically being that they are local-first pieces of software or open-source (another plus)

As per the, Assistive Technology Industry Association (link: What is AT? - Assistive Technology Industry Association)

Assistive technology (AT) is any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. Such tech can be broken down into categories of: a) low-tech assistive technology and b) high-tech assistive technology.

Common high-tech pieces of assistive technology include:

Organizational/Mind Mapping Software

Inspiration - my mapping software
***this is where I think Logseq, Obsidian, and other local first networked thought software can be placed under.

Speech to Text Software (SST)

  1. Dragon Naturally Speaking
  2. WordQ and Speak Q
  3. TextHelp Read&Write

Text-To-Speech Software (TSS)

  1. WordQ+SpeakQ,
  2. TextHelp Read&Write
  3. Learning Ally

Literacy Support Software

  1. Kurzweil 3000,
  2. WordQ+SpeakQ,
  3. TextHelp Read&Write
  4. Learning Ally

E-book/Audio Book Accessibility Services &Tools

  1. Kindle
  2. Bookshare - “makes reading easier. People with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers can customize their experience to suit their learning style and find virtually any book they need for school, work, or the joy of reading”

Making reading materials accessible

Scanning Software

  1. Scanner Pro

OCR Software

  1. Abby Fine Reader

  2. For those in Ontario, current funding sources I am aware of and used include:

  3. Bursery for Students with Disabilities (BSWD) - Post Secondary Students

  4. Assistive Devices Program - those with physical disabilities

  5. Various charities

Thoughts?

P.S. Shout out to Logseq for its outlining features which allowed me to finally write and post this!!! So grateful for this piece of software :pray:

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22

I just saw this post and would like to share a thought on this (not sure whether someone already mentioned it?)
The first idea that came to my mind was a business-model like reaper has it. There you have a “free trial” for about a month. Afterwards it regularly shows you a message, that your trial technically is over. But - the important part - they don’t stop you from using the software for free anyways. I think this might ensure that anyone who has a good reason not to pay will not pay while the others probably are tempted to pay…
I think I’d prefer such a model over the obsidian/athens model, where you again exclude some people from benefits provided by the software…

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23

Sort of “uses” the effect described here…

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This sounds awesome! Fascinating!

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I would say having the full Logseq experience available for everyone is a much more open-source and more beneficial model. While making additional services paid, such as making extended features, like syncing across devices or publishing services.

Personally I wouldn’t like the 1 month trial model, with an annoying pop-up. I think that would push people away from trying Logseq for an extended period of time.

The main reason being, if someone is considering moving their workflow, notes and task management to a new tool, a 1 month trial might feel discouraging and a waste of time.

I don’t think this trial plan would benefit Logseq. With that said, I do see where you are coming from, and I see how this model might work for other apps, but I would advice againts this model.

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26

I completely agree with this. Switching your notes into a new app is a big investment and can be overwhelming just on its own. Add to that the idea that you may only have a month to use it unless you pay, that could be too much of a hurdle. I don’t think a free trial is a good idea. There should be some sort of free version forever.

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Agree that the pop-up would push users away.

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I think that would work design-wise:

image
image1297×797 156 KB

:slight_smile:

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Personally, I think any form of ad or pop-up would really take away from the Logseq experience.
The internet is full of spam and distractions, the tool we use to write and think clearly, should be as distraction free as possible.

Awesome to know you agree @Sarah_Arminta and @Mina0824

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30

Agree! This is exactly why I didn’t even try Roam, and won’t even bother trying any software where there isn’t a clear path to using it for free and owning my data completely.

Now I may end up paying for the premium service if I like it or simply want to support the authors/business, but I don’t want my data to be held hostage for said payment. Especially since this is SaaS and not a one-time payment.

This is also exactly why I’m using logseq heavily even though it’s essentially alpha software. It’s not just open source, it’s released under the GNU Affero General Public License. If you aren’t aware of the implications of that:

is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works, specifically designed to ensure cooperation with the community in the case of network server software.

More straight from the source (LICENSE.md on logseq’s github):

It’s because of this that I feel confident about recommending logseq to anybody and spreading the word about it. Which will hopefully bring in some proportion of paid users and support the authors and the business.

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I agree with you, the lincense of Logseq is all about making it accesable and community focus which is a huge part of what makes Logseq amazing!

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  1. Sooner founder starts thinking about monetization — sooner it will happen

  2. I’m seeing kinda magical thinking in the thread: “if we create stable product with a lot of features (already done, but more is coming) — user will come and star donating. No, it will not happen. Or will, but in 5-10y

  3. All mentioned open source products different: the had a potential to be used on enterprise world. This product is totally for private use.

  4. To support a development product must make at least 10K $ per month. If you will charge for subscription 3$ per month, you will need 3333 paid users. In freemium world conversion from free to paid is 1%, very rarely 2-3%. So, you need to have more then 100k active users. Is it real?
    You can play with digits, but you will see that this is a tough question. Such tool might not be wide spread, so I it must cost 5-7$

  5. You either charge a lot from small about if users (1000$+ per month from business client) or little from large amount. Everything which is on the middle — is dead valley (there are very few exceptions). It’s a bitter truth

  6. Regular user don’t need so many features, it needs less. 3 times less. But more polished.
    More features == higher maintainance cost and steeper learning curve.

  7. This tool need to position itself clearly
    Eg: “cheaper roam research”
    I’d buy wthis :slight_smile: folks know what is roam research.

“outlining” niche has been already occupied by WorkFlowy and Dynalist
Graph knowledge base — there too many competitors.

  1. I see several option here for monetization

Short term

  • supporters get “badges” and early access to all new releases

Long term

  • self hosted solution — free.
  • cloud hosting — paid.
    I done want to bother myself with all this technicals question, I what a reliable solution with mobile support and I don’t care about privacy so much.

Other possibilities

  • go to the niche “collaboration tool” for teams
    “Like roam research but for teams”
    It will be kinda geek wiki-project-management tools for teams of roam-style-lovers.
    This niche is free. For now.
    I’m sure somebody will occupy it soon.

I see two paths

  • got for b2c market: less & more polished features, niche name “cheaper roam research” (in few years it can be changed, no worries)
  • for for b2b market: focus on collaboration, niche name: “roam for teams”

I see next risks

  • project can’t become financially stable; developers have to work park time, a lot and are burning out.
  • lot of features doesn’t help to make project stable and maintainable.

Hope it was helpful

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

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33

I must say I’m impressed by this excellent recommendations, harsh truths and real life experience examples.

I really hope the Logseq team can take a look at the gold you just laid out in here and find the best way to execute this excellent advice.

Personally I really like that idea, I think it’s genius and it definitely fills a hole in the market. Collaboration plus the power of Logseq plus the advantage of local files, would really makes Logseq stand out a lot!

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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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35

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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