I pay for intellij. I pay for Obsidian.

I would pay for zed.

The only path forward I see for a classic VC investment is the AI drive.

But I don't think the AI bit is valuable. A powerful plugin system would be sufficient to achieve LLM integration.

So I don't think this is a worthwhile investment unless the product gets a LOT worse and becomes actively awful for users who aren't paying beaucoup bucks for AI tooling- the ROI will have to center the AI drive.

It's not a move that will generate a good outcome for the average user.