[incision]

>"We’d kill the subscription model..."

I tend to be wary of any service with ongoing running costs sold as a one-time fee.

As long as new sales exceed the cost of servicing the existing population everything is fine. Once that relationship reverses all bets are off.

That said, I like this idea and $25 is a better price point that I would have expected.

[protomyth]

> I tend to be wary of any service with ongoing running costs sold as a one-time fee

Well, they aren't really charging a one time fee, they're charging per notebook.

[incision]

>"Well, they aren't really charging a one time fee, they're charging per notebook."

Sure, a one time fee per notebook. The "per" doesn't make it a different model.

[wlesieutre]

I think the closest analogy is pay-per-minute cell phones. No automatically renewing bill, but they do get recurring income from people who keep using it. Call it a one time fee per notebook if you want to, it's still a revenue stream per user than can keep them in business as long as users are using and replacing notebooks.

So the important nuance regarding your previous comment is that "new sales" doesn't mean "new users." You could run a stable business off of this with a steady user base, unlike a pay once use forever model.

This feels like a better bet for them than subscriptions. I certainly wouldn't have been interested in their previous model, but now I am.

[aestra]

The solution is obviously to have 2 tiers, a subscription model for heavy users and a per book model for light users.

[Timothee]

What are the ongoing running costs though? Serving the scanned images? Sure, but if the only way to add more data to that bucket is to keep buying notebooks, that should be fairly safe. The hosting costs should be very low compared to the price of the notebook. And if you continue accessing your files, you're likely to want to buy more notebooks.

[dasil003]

Are they hosting the images? I assumed it was relying on Dropbox/Evernote/OneNote, or at most a limited time drop.

[xerophtye]

They have their own app which integrates with dropbox/evernote/onenote for user conveneince