To be clear, I was thinking about the less-technically-sophisticated-than-HN crowd. E.g., is there a market for the people who would typically purchase VPN services, don't want to trust a VPN company, but don't know how to setup a cloud server?
Hmm, it depends on your threat model. If you're being targeted by a three-letter agency, then no (of course, you need something more secure than a VPN at that point, anyway). But if you're not singled out, your own VPS is much less likely to be passively surveilled than if it's part of a known VPN IP block.
To be clear, I was thinking about the less-technically-sophisticated-than-HN crowd. E.g., is there a market for the people who would typically purchase VPN services, don't want to trust a VPN company, but don't know how to setup a cloud server?