I am (personally) alright with this model. $150 is on par with OmniFocus Pro [0] which I've gotten easily more than $150 of value out of. (Including prior purchases of earlier versions, and similar price points.)
With todo apps, I don't really expect the same sort of constant on-slaught of features like I do from other things. I expect it to continue to work and get out of the way. I expect the price to reflect the fact there was a lot of upfront work to get it "done" to a level where I can just use it.
Right, but by choosing to go keyboard-focused it's competing in a space with very feature-rich Vim and Emacs plugins (and users who want to work out of those) that are free.
Even the Sublime users have lots of options already. Sublime is ALSO a very capable text editor and $100.
The OP is likely trying to deliver something like Superhuman ($30/month) - speed and keyboard focused-email - but for todos. I would imagine there is very little overlap between that market and people who use vim or emacs + plugins.
Fair, though I do think there's value you might be discounting here that ISN'T keyboard shortcuts. The market isn't all vim/emacs users, it's complex Omnifocus-style todo app users, who are frustrated with the lack of keyboard support in those apps. These users are more comfortable with this price point than you may expect (IMO) but will need feature parity for things like OmniFocus perspectives/floating timezones/easy outlining.
A CLI app is not something I would want to use for something I touch every 30minutes, every day, from many devices. But I do use vim for text editing.
OF keyboard support is fine - and I say it as an ex-emacs and current neovim user who works in terminal.
It does not look that stellar but is well thought out and I am faster with kb in OF than I was in org-mode.
With todo apps, I don't really expect the same sort of constant on-slaught of features like I do from other things. I expect it to continue to work and get out of the way. I expect the price to reflect the fact there was a lot of upfront work to get it "done" to a level where I can just use it.
[0] https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/