[siracguy]

Here's a reason to think about trial period rather than very limited functionality free-forever.

I don't know who you are targeting, but I would imagine that the customer sweet spot for you would be the intersection of: - Traders who are engaged enough and delve deeply enough to need Bloomberg-type data, beyond what is provided by the typical broker pages/Yahoo Finance/SEC/Seeking Alpha/fintwit/newsletters/company disclosures (which are all very low cost or free and sufficient I would think for casual users) - And yet, who are not professionals with access to the Bloomberg terminal

I suspect that this is a very small but growing group. The characteristics of this group is that they will be careful with money (it comes out of their pocket, not their employer) but if they find a tool that is actually useful and an aid to generating alpha, they have sufficient AUM that it is worthwhile to pay a reasonable monthly fee to access it.

FWIW, I'm not sure how much the uptime during market hours will be critical other than for day traders. Most of the traders in this group will also have day jobs.

This is all very unscientific and not based on data, I'm just going off my experiences and those of others I know who are in a similar boat.

P.S. Unless you're trying to disrupt the Bloomberg terminal itself for professionals, in which case please disregard this entire comment.

[akrai]

Thanks for this very well thought-out response. Will implement much of these thoughts