Why we will never sell ads

Every product eventually takes the shape of its business model. It's rarely a single decision; it's a thousand small ones, each perfectly reasonable on its own.

If revenue comes from advertising, the product slowly learns to maximise time spent and data collected, because that's what advertisers buy. Notifications get a little more insistent. The feed gets a little longer. Privacy settings get a little harder to find. No one sets out to build something manipulative — the incentives simply pull in that direction, quarter after quarter.

So we decided early that Selenra would make money one way: subscriptions, paid by the people who use our apps.

What that rules out

Choosing subscriptions only is less a policy than a set of doors we've closed on purpose:

• No advertising in any Selenra product, including "sponsored" placements and partner offers.
• No selling or renting data, in any form, to anyone — including in anonymised or aggregated form.
• No referral fees that would bias a recommendation. Perigee, our finance app, will never suggest a credit card.
• No engagement targets. We don't measure success by how long you spend in an app. For Nocturne, the ideal session ends with you asleep.

What it asks of us

A subscription has to be earned every month. That's the point. It means the only way for Selenra to grow is to make software people find genuinely worth paying for — and to keep it that way.

It also means pricing should be legible. Each app will have a single subscription with a free trial, no tiers engineered to push you upward, and cancellation that takes two clicks rather than a phone call.

Where we'll be tested

Principles are easy when they're free. They get tested when they cost something: when a partnership offer arrives, when growth slows, when a competitor finds a clever new way to monetise attention.

We're writing this down publicly so that, when those moments come, there's a record of what we promised. If we ever fall short of it, we'd like you to tell us — hello@selenra.com reaches the people who build the apps.