[swombat]

So, are you gonna pay $50/m for this, to make them profitable?

Assuming they've taken, say, $500k, to get that back from 200 writers they'd need to make $2.5k from each of the current writers. Even doubling the number of writers, that's still $1.25k - 25 months at $50/m.

So actually, to recoup the investment from writers in any reasonable time they'd need to charge more like $100-200/m. I doubt many of their 200 writers would stay in those circumstances. Would you?

Other than charging the writers, I don't see what business model svbtle can support, other than advertising, which would also jar with the way the site is designed, and also with the ambitions of many star bloggers, who typically want to eventually have the option to put their own discreet ads à la DaringFireball on their blog...

[steveklabnik]

I would certainly not. I like Svbtle, but not that much. Then again, there are few SaaS things I'd be paying $50/month for at this point.

One of the things dcurtis promised was data portability, and if I had to pay $50/month to be on Svbtle, I'd probably exercise that option.

I have no idea what the business model is either.

[il]

You're failing to make the distinction between revenue and enterprise value. EV could be a manyfold multiple of revenue.