On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 8:48 AM Samuel Murrayy <samuelmurray@...> wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean.  I do have the distinct impression that Mark originally wanted to build communities, and there is nothing to suggest that his original motive was deceit.  I have no idea what direction Mark is hoping that Groups.io as a whole should take in future.  I do not believe that Mark thinks that non-business groups generally have lots of money available to pay for this type of service.  However, do I speculate freely that Mark is aiming at increasing the use of Groups.io by businesses, and that he hopes that businesses who use Groups.io will choose to pay for it.  I don't know of Mark's original motive for Groups.io was to make money or to have a nice hobby, but it doesn't affect my opinion of him or his venture.

I started Groups.io (my coding on it started 7 years ago as of next week) because I feel strongly that email groups have distinct advantages over web fora and other discussion mediums for some types of groups. But no one was investing in modernizing them (Yahoo and Google were just maintaining, at best, their email group services). My thesis was that I could create a good business around it. And I still believe that. 

There are a few reasons behind the per-member pricing structure changes. It aligns revenue with costs, importantly. Also, the fact is that the business is not yet generating enough revenue for me to be able to hire help. I'm still the only guy running things (Nina doing a great job contracting on the manuals being the exception). You all deserve it to be a real business. It'd be nice to be able to provide better customer support. It'd be nice to be able to more quickly implement TODO items and fixes. It'd be nice if I could take some real time off occasionally; maybe get hit by a bus now and then. :-)

Mark