btw, look at this cool calculator to help you optimise pricing  

https://buttondown.com/features/paid-subscriptions 

Congrats on shipping Pro—this is a significant milestone.

After our call, I had a think, and I have a few thoughts on the new model as it stands. Here are some suggestions as food for thought. 

Give (some) analytics to your free users. It's a powerful growth driver for Leaflet and publishers. Show me my publication is growing and that you're helping me grow, then I'm compelled to pay you. Right now, analytics is table stakes (most if not all your competitors do it for free) and worst case, you're charging me to find out nobody is reading my blog. You may be crippling a really powerful conversion driver.

Email sends are also a potential growth driver for Leaflet too. Does it make sense to charge (up to a certain volume).

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Simplify the tier logic. I find the pricing models confusing and perhaps competing with each other:
* Flat $12/month subscription (for analytics)
* Usage-based email fees (coming soon)
* Transaction-based membership fees (coming soon, no Pro required?)

I can't easily do the maths on how I grow and how much I earn, and how much that might cost me. 

I suggest to focus them into one easy to understand model.
e.g. 

Free
- Simple limited analytics to show engagement and growth
- Up to 1000 free subscribers

If I'm bringing in new subscribers, that's good for me AND it's good for Leaflet (net new readers).

Get me onto the growth ramp, show me I'm growing, move me towards revenue, ask me to pay when I start getting successful.

Creator
- Deeper analytics to help me scale and optimise
- <5000 free subscribers
- ≤1000 paid subscribers (writer sets the price)
- Take ≤10% of the $subscription fee

+ scheduling, group pubs, custom footers, etc...

Publisher
- Deeper analytics to help me scale and optimise
- Up to 10000 free subscribers
- >1000 paid subscribers
- Take ≤7% of the $subscription fee

These are sample numbers but my point is with a model like this, Leaflet revenue grows with the writer's success.

Right now I think you're asking people to pay $144/year for stats whilst telling them memberships won't require Pro. That's confusing to me. If I can monetise without Pro, why would I pay for it??

The open ecosystem positioning is strong, but you need a killer driver that's meaningfully better than incumbents to drive migration. IMHO pro writers will care about "can I grow and make more money with less friction better on Leaflet than (incumbent X)?" Answer that question for them and you've got your wedge.

Looking forward to seeing how this evolves—genuinely rooting for Leaflet! 💌

Your structural diagnosis is dead-on: universities absolutely struggle with the institutional/personal knowledge divide. The ATProto interoperability angle is genuinely differentiated from previous attempts. But decision-makers will want and need to see the first 100 metres, not just the horizon, to be convinced.