My co-founder and I are building a groups and events system (like Meetup) that has a friends list and things like instant messaging. Our business model at the moment is freemium with ads and a limited organizer experience (you can create small groups/events) or we are offering a small subscription ~$5/mo. The subscription model removes the ads, unlocks all organizer features, and removes all limits on organizing groups/events such as being able to create a hierarchical organization with the tooling to manage it.

We are currently in YC Startup School as Geddy at geddy.io and we plan to launch soon.

My main concern is that if you're in startup-crazy VC-funded world, you're eventually going to try to make more money, somehow, off my presence on your site -- through selling data or advertising or whatever.

If I do join it, I'll immediately leave when that happens. But if I think it might happen, I won't join it. The thing that would get me really interested would be a promise (ideally a legally restrictive one, like being a B-corp or a non-profit) that that won't happen.

I think that everyone (at least in my age group?) is slowly becoming enormously skeptical of companies offering services. I _want_ to use a service forever and have it be good and trustworthy. But in practice I feel like I'm getting tricked and manipulated at every turn, which is just slowly turning me into a luddite.

I believe you still need a FB account.

There are plenty of paid games that do not include any kind of microtransaction. I'd consider the paid-games ecosystem to be surprisingly healthy these days. But to be fair, it's all console/PC. Mobile games are likely to remain a F2P wasteland.

Facebook and similar make me wary of getting excited about anything which seems superficially good without first understanding the underlying intentions of the creators.