That's a short term business model if I have ever seen one.
"customers who stick around." is anthesis to mid- to long-term customer loyalty when you do "jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible"
Add to this that they make it really, really hard to unsubscribe. I think there's been some legal crackdowns, but for a time, they could make it literally impossible.
This article is like an advertisement. Here's how they spin it:
> Speaking to TechCrunch, co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli said some of the scrutiny was due to the fact that products such as Evernote were genuinely loved by their users. But he said that despite all the changes, customer retention has been “remarkably stable.”
Ah yes. In other news, the prison population size is also remarkably stable.
Customer "inertia" or "lock-in" might be better terms to describe what the company is looking for in an acquisition.
Their ideal customer may well be someone who's forgotten they have a subscription on credit card auto-pay.