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Aren't one-off payments to cover running costs provably unsustainable? It relies on continuous growth to support old users. I personally would want to rely on a
by karamanolev 7y ago
Aren't one-off payments to cover running costs provably unsustainable? It relies on continuous growth to support old users. I personally would want to rely on a service that might close at any minute because it stopped growing.
- Gaelan 7y agoThe idea is that they'd form an endowment. So they put your $10 in some sort of relatively safe investment, and every year it grows by, say, 1%. So then they have 10¢/year/GB to spend on storage costs.
- djmobley 7y agoNot if you are able to charge enough, and reinvest the funds such that low-risk investment returns will cover the cost. Combine that with underlying costs (storage, data transfer, computing power) which are trending downward and there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.
- thruflo 7y agoMoney makes money. Say they raise enough to earn interest on their capital. Say they make 1% interest per year. Storing a GB costs $10. 1% of that is 10c. How much does it cost to store a GB for a year? Amazon charge ~1c/m for infrequent access and 0.4c/m for Glacier. So somewhere between 12c and 5c a year.
- erinnh 7y agoAt 10$/gb they are charging 200 times what you pay for a gb elsewhere for a month. So they are at least getting 200 months worth of money from you upfront. Even aside from what the others mentioned with the endowment.