What to think about hey.com and its launch success

Here's an insightful article about hey.com that stirred me to write this quick post. I guess we need to wait and watch hey.com's success. I too am guilty of subscribing to the free trial after their Apple controversy but I don't see myself or my peers pay the 99$/year. My hunch is that the churn from the initial 200k free trial requesters will really be very high for the founder's standards (37signals rocks btw, love their story, the company culture, and their basecamp product). 

Re. the open-ended consideration that the author wonders, I am equally intrigued. My guess is that they are probably

a) not too revenue-oriented with their current product offering (not discounting the opportunity to build brand awareness and cross-sell their basecamp product)

b) vision the email solution for a small, elite class of folks (highly privacy focussed) and look to build a coveted ecosystem how Apple did their initial years.

The market size though does not seem too bleak.

A couple of hypotheses:

1. The top 1-2% rich folks from every country and percentages higher in areas such as silicon valley wouldn't mind paying for such an email service as they can afford it (anything for that matter) and privacy does often get into their frequent conversations.

2. Govts and some high-security focussed corporates may also get interested.

So reaching the 250k target in the first year (their goal) doesn't seem impractical. However, I don't see how the product can bring in more activated users with its current value prop. I think it will remain as a favorite to a small population and hey.com should enjoy high retention from their activated users. This is unless hey.com v2 brings around another remarkable value prop for everyday users.  

I would be happy to receive comments and opinions to discuss further.