>It’s like the old Jackie Mason joke — A man is selling jackets at cost. The customer asks “how can you sell at cost, how do you make any money?” Answer: “I sell a lot of jackets!”'
I think one point of the article was that recurring revenue is more complex than that. It all depends on pricing, time to recoup customer acquisition cost, and a few other things.
If it takes 18 months to become a "jacket" (ie break even), then whether or not it's worth it depends on factors such as churn, cost of account servicing, cost of IT, etc.
