Improve company overview on marketing website
I read through https://proton.me/support/who-owns-protonmail and https://proton.me/about/team while trying to understand what the deal was, and if you were going to last for a while.
Your presentation of the important things about the organization needs to improve.
Currently you just look like a for profit alternative to mail.com that offers less inbox limit. A for-profit company that's in the stage where they buy the market share before hugely monetising users, floating stock, getting taken over by different management and so on.This happens all the time with game companies.
Firstly the initial presentation needs to change. Take a cue from Wikipedia and the Guardian.com.
Wikipedia says it is not for sale when asking for crowd funding.
The Guardian says it doesn't have a billionaire owner in every article at the bottom:
The Guardian is not owned by a billionaire or shareholders: we’re fiercely independent, which means we are free to report the truth at a time when powerful people are getting away with more and more. With your vital funding, whether recurring or one-time, we can continue working this way in 2024.
We are not for sale – but only thanks to your support. If you believe in open, independent journalism, please consider giving a year-end gift from $1. Thank you.
https://www.theguardian.com/about
The Guardian is owned by Guardian Media Group, which has only one shareholder - the Scott Trust.
The Scott Trust, named after our longest serving editor, CP Scott, exists to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity.
Today more than half of our revenue comes directly from our readers, helping to support Guardian journalism and keep it open for everyone.
In short, the Guardian isn’t owned or controlled by advertisers or billionaires. It’s owned by a Trust, and it runs on trust. Let’s keep building that trust together.
The simplest solution would be to say you were a non-profit, but you are registered as a company, and proton users (that were part of the initial crowdfunding push?) own shares. These shares look like the type of thing people own to make money for the sake of making money. It makes the fact the company is employee owned look worse - i.e. that when then company gets big the old employees will have a lot of ownership and will focus on making more money, and taking out more and more of the company in the form of dividends. That doesn't engender trust, or make people want to make the commitment to using Proton long term. . "If something is free, you are the product" as the corporate saying goes.
Consider what has happened to other tech companies providing free/cheap online services like you're doing. Google diverged from it's "Do no evil", didn't they? Then there's Microsoft and "Embrace, extend, extinguish". Companies with free services like Reddit and Twitter are walling themselves off and monetising harder. Microsoft is buying free things like Github or Discord, before doing things like using people's source code to train AI without the right to such use even remotely relevant to it's primary service.
On the plus side you were crowdfunded, the EU gives you grants, as does a government organisation for the public good. And you were founded at CERN by scientists.
What does being "employee owned" mean in Proton's case? Are you following the Valve game company model where money is distributed based on independently evaluated or peer evaluated measures of relative contribution? Or do these shares mean people who initially started the company and took a risk keep on getting a percentage cut far above the per-hour wage for the initial work and the compensation for the stress? Does it mean that once the company gets big these people may sell their shares, or maybe change their values or be out of touch in 20 years time?
For more information on what I mean by Valve's structure see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Structure
Valve uses a peer review system for compensation based on contribution, but other means of evaluation including independent assessment can work. The important element is recognizing contributions rather than percentage ownership. The exact structure is something that a company would iterate on as it gets bigger, gets a large profit margin, and has more resources to use for better allocation.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/valve-handbook-new-employees-book-summary-jeremey-donovan
http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf
Valve also uses a fairly flat company hierarchy to help with game design and creation as they are in the visual arts, but that's not relevant here.
If you wanted to restructure the company away from the big business formula, towards a "believably-not-greed-oriented" model, you should contact Valve privately. They have been known to guide small game devs restructure companies, and they like open source.
Suggestion:
Present the company as initially crowdfunded, funded the EU commission, partially owned by and supported by a non-profit, and majority owned by employees.
Saying things like "Proton is privacy for everyone. Welcome to a better internet where privacy and freedom come first" just sounds like buzz words and adjectives. Although offering some privacy features. Every company has expansive warm slogans with big vague adjectives, that really don't FEEL that different compared to Protons.
Start out with concrete things that other companies can't say, to show you are on the side of good. The best way would be to say you area non-profit, but it's still possible to quickly communicate some points.
Find a way of communicating salient points quickly, and linking to the the who own proton page, and maybe a page showing employees starting with those who have PHDs in physics or math 1st, before listing others. It's a great point of difference as other internet service companies won't have such distinguished employees, and such people will generally not tend to work for them.
Even something like "an initially crowdfunded company, partially non-profit and majority employee owned, supported by EU" would be a huge improvement. You can add "No stock-exchange, billionaire owner" after it. Maybe even "Founded by CERN physicists". "No ads, no misleading" or "Not based around misleading users with 3rd party ads" or maybe "No selling you to misleading ad companies" is important - spell out what privacy means, as well as pointing out ad based business models revolve around misleading users. It's a pity you can't say "Proton is not for sale" like Wikipedia, with your current shareholding setup.
I'm sure you can find really concise ways of communicating all this if you consider it for a time, and ask around.
This needs to be right upfront, maybe after "Proton is privacy for everyone.", if not before. You also need to talk about what makes Proton's structure and goals unique.
Going forward, it would look cleaner to buy out the shares owned by Proton users, when you can afford it. Bonus points if you restructure the company so you can give a legal guarantee proton isn't for sale. You can probably point out they would have made enough money with the buyout price and share appreciation that they don't need to take a percentage cut .
You should add a donate button for small or extra donations, and explain the benefits of directly crowdfunding projects like Wikipedia does. Even if few people use it it's a good chance to show you are one of the good guys.
You should crowdfund when you need to do development pushes like the game industry does, instead of following big business models. The effort put into crowdfunding media and communication will be great for publicity and showing Proton isn't just another greedy corporate entity.
It would help if you pointed out how Proton was governed and who sets goals prominently.
Adding content to Wikipedia articles and linking to them would also make proton appear trustworthy. You can link to Wikipedia after statements, as well as to your topic pages that can go into more detail than Wikipedia - but your pages should also link to Wikipedia prominently.
e.g. This page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(technology_company)
You should also put your forums upfront. Maybe create general discussion forums, not just forums based on feature improvements. That will help with transparency, and community.
Good luck,
cheers
PS: Deciding to use a service, or even to check out a service requires a mental commitment. Things like mail services are things people want to be around for a while. You should consider an unlimited text inbox, and just limit images or something if people go over a limit. Having a limit can make it feel awkward to go away for a while, especially when subscribed to mailing lists and the like. Consider making things like opensource development mailing lists and mails from .org or .gov domains or known opensource hubs like SF not count in inbox limits - subscribers to such lists are often be volunteers for those projects.