092 - Lifetime

Most software you use today is not built to last. You subscribe, you pay rent, and the app gets worse every year. But subscriptions exist for a real reason, and the reason is more interesting than "companies are greedy."

Here is the loop: software needs constant maintenance because it wasn't built to last in the first place. Servers, APIs, accounts, databases. So the subscription ends up funding the fragility that justifies the subscription.

We built Stash to break out of that loop. No server. No account. No outside dependencies. Everything happens on your device. That architecture is the only reason a lifetime price is even possible for us, and it means the version you have installed keeps working even if we stop tomorrow.

This video covers the whole reasoning, including the bet we're making on open weight text to speech models, and why we think that bet gives you years of free improvements after a single purchase.