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Nice overview.

"Freemium is a harder model to implement in open source, since the source is, well, open, but we do see this in things like WordPress...."

=> Just to add another flavor: The Freemium model is working well for us even so we are not SaaS.

In our case, the main part of the RPA software is open-source (GPL) and free. All Internet access is only done within the open-source core.

The features of this core app can be extended by local native apps for Mac, Linux and Windows. These are proprietary/closed source.

Very nice idea. As an ISV with a freemium open-source extension, I would happily pay for an official security review that I could present to our users. Our extension is secure by design but having a 3rd-party expert (e. g. Google or Firefox reviewer) confirm this and get a "Reviewed" badge would be great. The drawback is that this could slow down extension updates, as you do not want to loose this badge with the next update. But that is manageable.

Our initial tests were with standard template matching algorithms. With the Javavscript implementation we were stuck in the 60 seconds+ range per image search.

With WebGL it was ~0.5s on a "good" machine and ~6s or "did not work at all" on a "bad" machine. We never figured out why it worked well on one machine, but not so on others. Of course, I am talking only about machines with WebGL enabled ;) This would have been a support nightmare.

With WebAssembly we are now in the 0.1-0.5s range per image search and it just works. So far, we have had exactly 0 WA-related support issues, for both, Chrome and Firefox.

Agree - startup alley is not the place to meet (non startup) customers.

I have been to Startup Alley once with my previous company. We managed to get exactly 0 new customers out of it. So on this point, totally agree with you. I did not expect tons of new business, but not getting a single new customer was disappointing, especially since the product sold well otherwise.

However, I got a surprising amount of good discussions out of it, both at the booth and over lunch. And I had fun. So overall, it was worth the price if you factor in the inspirational component.

3 months seems long. We ported our Copyfish extension to Firefox recently, and the approval process took only ~10 days. I think first feedback took about a week. The reviewer replied with constructive feedback and we had to change a few small things. Then it took another 1-2 days for the final approval. So yes, there is a real human being behind it. Or some super-AI ;)

Extension can/could read all data that you enter in websites. So you should only install extensions from trusted sources/developers.

And/or: What I do is to have one Chrome profile for important websites (e. g. online banking) and another one for the casual web surfing. This "casual" profile is where I try out all new extensions. And only the ones I really need are used in the "secure" profile as well.