I think to make to next level, should do some sort of paid tier, so to keep Hubitat not only alive, but healthy alive. Not much but say like 10 bugs an year so to pump based on installed base.
Then can afford more staff to look into issues like community developed drivers, new not old fashion dashboard with community developed custom tiles, fixed zwave, fixed functionalities like phone presence which currently defies lots of purpose of smart things, etc, etc.
Funny you should mention this, as we are in beta right now for our first paid subscription services.
Even as we grow this will be prioritized along with all of the other demands on the business. I don't know how long you've been around, but we add drivers at a prodigious rate. Efforts around phone presence are ongoing, improvements to Z-Wave are ongoing, more dashboard options are upcoming, etc. Community development no doubt will continue as well, and will continue to pose its own challenges, especially with respect to support -- which we do not take on.
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Coming from an open source supported solution. It is normally all about price of supporting tickets. A suggestion would be you get two support tickets per hub lifetime; then a yearly support subscription price. If someone wants to not be on the subscription and raise a ticket - you charge them 50% of the subscription per ticket. You will find this will limit the random tickets - and allow a revenue support stream.
With all due respect, it's not quite that simple, but I agree with your concept. New customers have very specific issues, many of which point to needs we have to improve the out-of-box experience and initial use of the hub. For older customers some tend to abuse support, and what you're saying would definitely make sense (won't mention names, but they know who they are). Support is expensive on a per ticket basis, so figuring this out is something we've been working on. We aren't a huge company like Samsung that can just throw money at telephone call centers. Some of our competitors basically ran out of money because they spent too much on support (e.g. Iris, Wink).
It's funny, every now and then we run into a prospective customer who either won't purchase or returns their hub because we don't offer telephone support. Do the math. One support phone call with industry standard costs would almost wipe out the margin on the sale of the hub, and two makes it a loss. That just doesn't scale!
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"Support incidents", "Tickets", "Call Centers"... all those rusty old-fashions, big companies felt in this trap.
Just take money on subscription to afford fixing what should be fixed/advanced and scale your team in a way, only you know best.
You are great company, make it fantastic.
PS.
Idd I wasn't here for long (couple of months, bough 2 hubs for tests), but being with Samsung SmartThings for years, to witness how easy&fast "big ideas", "bold moves", "nice slogans" can screw things 
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I have a good friend in India that runs offshore technical support teams. If you need someone to talk too - I am sure he would listen and give you advice based upon your requirements.
Keeping this product viable is in the best interest of everyone. 
back on topic the one app from rboy i would really like is the lock manager .. In my opinion it was quite a bit more advanced than the built in one in hubitat.
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[quote="bravenel, post:45, topic:67869"]
Some of our competitors basically ran out of money because they spent too much on support (e.g. Iris, Wink)
[/quote
Regardless of why Iris shutdown I'm pleased as it ultimately led me to Hubitat which has been a huge improvement. However, I'm not quite sure that Iris ran out of money. They were a part of Lowe's which is a fortune 50 company. I think the reason for the Iris platform shutting down was because of the new CEO, Marvin Ellison decided to remove any part of the company that was not directly related to the core business of home improvement.
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Cash flow of a business unit is almost always determinative in how a new CEO would view its value, coming in. If Iris had had positive cash flow things might have gone differently.
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I'm on my 4th different home automation system. Started out with Ismart. After a year on that one it wasn't going anywhere. Don't know if it is still in business or not. Then I went to Iris. If I remember right, I was paying $10 a month for that service. And again it was going nowhere. Then went to ST. That was ok, till they started making it very hard for minor programmer like myself to do anything. So came to HE. Really like HE as I can still do my own apps easily. And the local operation is a big plus. Especially since we lost our internet for 10 days a couple weeks ago.
But I am concerned that HE will continue to be around. Don't know about all the big business stuff but if there is no cash flow in then sooner or later things are going to go downhill. Unless all the HE guys are independently wealthy and don't care..:).
I would be quite willing to pay a monthly fee to keep things going.
And in my case the Schlage driver that exposes other settings. Not to mention the built in Schlage driver is broken (automations). The generic Zwave one works better. My whole reason for starting this post. 
You will still have your hub working locally.
Granted no more updates and if it does go faulty then a new solution will be needed but personally I just don't get this continued speculation about HE and what might happen.
Seems to raise its head every few months.
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Indeed it does.
IMHO it’s a waste of time not only to fret over how they plan to stay in business, but also to make suggestions about what they could or should do to make more money.
The common denominator being that we as their customers are privy to basically none of the inside information the staff are, which is a necessary precondition to a well-informed opinion.
And you know what they say about opinions...
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Of course with Hubitat making no promises to developers that they won't just add the features to their in-box offering once they see how popular the developer's offering is, would RBoy take the time to port it (even when there is a store)? I guess only time will tell!
I mean, if it isn't a lot of work then sure. If it is a lot of work, I think it is a risky. But I guess I'm conservative with my time.
I imagine a (fictional) scenario where RBoy ports his app - it is wildly popular - so based on the customer demand Hubitat sees they decide to add some/most of the features to their in-box Lock Manager. RBoy is SOL at that point - both development time and new sales lost.
I imagine a second (fictional) scenario where Hubitat is already working on an enhanced Lock Manager due to requirements from their commercial customers, but RBoy has no idea that is happening (as discussed there are no roadmaps, and none will be provided per Bruce). So RBoy ports his app, then next month Hubitat comes out with their "enhanced Lock Manager" that has many/most of RBoy's features for free. RBoy is SOL at that point - both development time and new sales lost.
I have been accused of being paranoid before, but I will point out that similar things have happened multiple times on apps/drivers over the past few years. As Bruce said, that is their prerogative - I'm not disputing that. But I am postulating that is a negative incentive for developers if their intent is monetizing their work.
When you are competing with the platform itself, it is hard impossible to win in the long term.
But whatever. Here's hoping for more quality 3rd party apps and drivers anyway!
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As @bravenel indicated a few posts ago, Subscription services are currently in beta. So, presumably, you'll have the opportunity to pay a periodic fee soon enough.
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But RBoy also has/had that danger with SmartThings right? What was to stop Samsung from doing the same thing?
When RBoy made his apps there were no SmartThings equivalents. There was no in-box "Lock Manager" in SmartThings...
But to your point, could Samsung have squashed his apps if they wanted to - yup. There is no zero risk scenario, of course. The platform owner is always going to reserve the right to improve their offerings. It is how they (privately) communicate with those existing app/driver authors that is key to happiness.
I do think it is "more likely" that a user app/driver will be supplanted, though, if there is already an existing in-box app (even if it is currently less feature filled).
But I'm arguing theoreticals. I could be completely wrong.
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Huh.. Odd .. Ok.. I have one of these coming in today actually, so I'll be checking into it..
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Sent ya a PM about what to watch for / quirks.
It's actually a great lock, just a little quirky at first with the pairing.
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