I saw an announcement on Xiaohongshu that a product is about to stop operations. I clicked in to take a look, and they initially took a completely free and ad-free approach, making the product very pure. However, because of this, they basically had no stable income, and as the user base grew, the operating costs followed suit. At the end of last year, they started trying out a membership fee, but from the comments, it seems many users didn't understand. A year later, they still haven't reached a break-even point and had no choice but to announce the cessation of operations. Many products face similar dilemmas, being well-received but not commercially successful. For small startup teams, it's best to have a clear business model from the very beginning when developing a product, and ideally, start charging from day one to avoid the approach of building up user numbers first and then figuring out how to charge, as the risks are too high. 😐