I know the founders and can confidently say this is anything but a cash grab. They don’t andvertise this fact, but the guys are really into privacy, and they want to see this come to life for the sake of data protection. VC funding is the means to make it a reality, as good hardware is expensive and takes time to get right.
They don't need to sell hardware to achieve what they're doing. In the current form, they are mainly selling a service (SMTP relay on EC2) disguised as hardware (imx board inside a fancy box).
Why not charge the service for $100/year and allow anyone to use a Raspberry Pi and USB flash drive, which costs $35+$20? If they're using Linux on an imx, then there's likely little difficulty in porting to Raspberry Pi.
If I understand what you are asking correctly, then you are not wrong, and there's definitely an option to do this, but you are not the customer they are looking for.
If you have the chops to get a Rpi running, then you probably know how to run a mail server or you are definitely able to read an EXIM book and get it going on EC2 in a day... with all the consequences.
On the other hand, if you are a business professional, or a crypto holder, or a privacy concerned mom, you don't have the time and chops to go through the setup. What you want is an "iPhone for email", and this is what Helm will provide.
One device, simple setup, no hassle, all updates and management are taken care for you. It's beautiful, and $99/y isn't going to sway you. I pay $100/m for Comcast and get subpar internet in return, but I am not going to go and setup an ISP to save money.
That said, if you think this is a good idea but could be done at $100/y sub on a Pi, perhaps is a great time to start a competing service ;)
If a .iso is provided, I can't see why flashing a custom "Helm iso" is any different from flashing the default "Raspberry Pi iso", and there are a lot of people who can flash the raspbian -- there have been 5 - 10 million raspberry pi's sold so far. So, I think there are a lot of people who can use the Raspberry Pi.
