I'm interested to learn more details, how things were when you first started out selling the app and the trend.
Personally I want a full blown IDE that takes advantage of advanced modern technologies such as displays that can draw individual pixels, have a model of the codebase that allows advanced features such as word completion and preferably fits nicely with the underlying OS. A debugger would also be nice, but i understand that sometimes i ask too much.
I wouldn't mind paying for such a tool (though i do mind DRM schemes and subscriptions - i want to be able to pay once and then be on my way). Cursive looks something i'd pay for if i was really interested into Clojure and was using macOS.
um... it runs on Linux and Windows as well.
Somebody else could probably speak more to it than me, since I do primarily use Emacs, but I definitely don't introduce my friends to Clojure with it.
It's important to note, that there are markets where Google pays 70-90k / year[1].
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Berlin-Salaries-EI_I...
Thinking about it, I'm not sure Cursive pays more than my total comp at Google, but certainly more than salary + bonus.
One representative comment that someone made to me at a conference was along the lines of "Since my boss encouraged us to move to Emacs, I've never spent so long fiddling with and arguing about my editor config. After a while most of us moved to Cursive and all that just went away".
I think Emacs is generally easier to get along with these days, but it'll never be as easy to use as a "normal" app where things just work out of the box. Some people like that, and others don't, but it's not as simple as a division between newbies and experienced users. They're roughly equivalent in power these days, some things Emacs does better and others Cursive does better - fortunately there's plenty of room for both, even in a userbase as small as Clojure's.