2M users but no money in the bank

Nonprofit vs “Free Forever” Model

• Many argue the core problem isn’t “nonprofit” status but “non‑revenue”: a nonprofit can and often must charge; “everything free forever” is what fails.
• Several see the statement about losing faith in the nonprofit model as really about this specific free‑for‑all implementation, not nonprofits generally.
• Some criticize advertising “100% free, forever,” saying it boxed the project into an unsustainable promise and mis-set user expectations.

User Numbers, Engagement, and Value

• 2M registered users contrasts with ~70k monthly active users; some see retention as poor, others say short‑term use is expected for a language‑learning tool.
• One view: if you can’t get even a tiny fraction (e.g., 1 in 500) to pay, maybe the product isn’t as valuable as the vanity metric suggests.
• Others push back, citing examples of valuable projects where donations remain a tiny fraction of users.

Monetization Proposals

• Freemium / paywall variants: low annual fee ($5–$20), “honor system” pricing, or locking completion of tracks behind payment while keeping a free tier.
• Corporate/team plans: per‑developer fees that procurement can treat as a subscription rather than a donation.
• Job board / talent marketplace: paid listings or recruiter access, though several note this vertical is crowded, cyclical, and biased toward experienced devs.
• Certifications, paid structured courses, or API‑specific “tracks” sponsored by companies.
• Advertising: from direct sponsorships to Google Ads; some see this as the simplest path, others strongly oppose degrading UX.
• Selling anonymized training data or building an AI‑enhanced product line is floated, with ethical and practical concerns.

Hosting and Infrastructure Costs

• Current AWS spend (~$7.5k/month) draws heavy scrutiny.
• Some claim equivalent workloads could be run on bare‑metal/VPS providers for 5–10% of the cost, suggesting a large optimization opportunity.
• Others stress hidden ops costs (redundancy, backups, monitoring, on‑call) and note that even zero hosting cost would not fund meaningful staffing; the real gap is revenue.

Reactions to Strategy and Future

• Mixed reactions to the founder working on a new for‑profit educational product: some see it as a sensible way to fund Exercism; others view it as a distraction or implicit pivot.
• Several express strong emotional support, praise the product’s quality, and report donating or subscribing after reading, but emphasize that long‑term survival requires charging some users.