You make some very good points, particularly around the historical use of subscriptions.

Though I agree that some companies currently use subscription as continuous cash extraction strategy, but that's not us.

The reason SaaS is successful as a strategy is because it lowers the barrier to entry. Software which used to cost hundreds of dollars is now tens of dollars a month, and more people are willing to get on board with that.

As mentioned, we did offer a one-time option, in response to complaints about subscription, and we got zero sales. Even from the people who said "if this wasn't a subscription, I'd buy it".

When looking at our business model, there were a few things we considered when deciding on subscription.

1) The hardware is going to change and improve rapidly over the next few years. We decided to keep the price of the hardware fairly low so the upgrade investment is low.

2) As mentioned the one-time fee didn't sell, likely due to sticker shock. We've seen a few other companies in our space try this before, and they've all failed. Those failures are not only due to pricing, but I think it had a significant impact.

3) As unit economics improve to the point we can offer a monthly subscription as a starting point, that really makes this technology accessible to a wider audience, and particularly to some groups who need it most.

Our headband provides sleep tracking technology without a subscription, we're just not selling it as that right now, as the value, we believe, is in the improved sleep and health outcomes.

We look at the stimulation like an app that is running on the device, and it's just the first capability we are providing. We'll be expanding that offering in the future.

With your last sentence, do you mean a "rent-to-own" model? I'm not against that at all, but I'm not sure that really works today, or how we would explain that. It isn't common anymore, and I don't want us having to explain the business model to people being the barrier to sales. Which is why removed the full price option. Each decision point in a purchase causes friction.