Some other companies that are tracking towards sustainable success that we look at are:
* Oura
* Wyze
* Peloton (though they made some growth mis-steps)
All three of those follow a subscription model to get off of the "‘consumer electronics’ release cycle" that Eric calls out in his post. That's not the model that we're following, but we do have an alternate strategy to avoid falling into that same trap.
I'm surprised to see Oura mentioned here as a success. They don't have a single customer currently paying for a subscription (everyone would still be within the six month free trial) and haven't released most of the features included in their subscription offering. It's doubtful that most of their users would pay for the subscription.
The feedback was presumably so bad that their CEO left the company less than two months after the announcement of the new product and subscription model.
Wyze isn't doing so hot, after just forcing everyone onto a subscription to maintain the functionality they thought was included with the product they purchased. To their credit, they let you 'subscribe' at $0/mo, but the pressure to pay was quite strong. They also didn't message it well — my brother got email warnings, but I (a longtime customer) received none.
Also I think these three companies founders are not typical SV founders but have like strong executive background from Amazon, Nokia and Barnes & Nobles.
Some other companies that are tracking towards sustainable success that we look at are:
* Oura
* Wyze
* Peloton (though they made some growth mis-steps)
All three of those follow a subscription model to get off of the "‘consumer electronics’ release cycle" that Eric calls out in his post. That's not the model that we're following, but we do have an alternate strategy to avoid falling into that same trap.