Didn't read the whole thread but a few thoughts.
For 200k ped I could buy a mothership and a privateer and a decent stockpile of warp drives and with the remaining 50k ped I would be better setup for trading than I ever was when running one of the most profitable warp services at the time.
Profitable however is subjective.....
During that period of my life, my wife and I each put in more;
Time
Energy
Emotion
Commitment
into the project than any 1/2 time job would require, EACH.
We had dozzens of crew who also each put in enormous amounts of time and energy (and were paid well for it)
It was fun, it was a challenge, and I was happy with our success.
However, as profitable and successful as we were, its only value was as a fun hobby. We would have been much better off financially working part time jobs, or even a few hours of OT at our regular jobs a day.
A large part of our business model was doing everything we could to reduce prices in order to maximize profits. The main way of doing this is flying the 1.5hrs slow between planets when you dont have a paying warp customer and building huge networks of clients who appreciated our hard work in getting them VIP flights for the price of 1 warp instead of 2. We would often get tipped 1/2 the price of the warp we saved them, which cost us very very little in fuel to fly slow to get there.
Profit sharing was split between crew, the manager (me), and ship owners (I owned the mothership and a buddy owned the privateer). My wife and I were often the main crew onboard so during those flights we got all three sides of the cut. Our top crewman working for us often made 1000ped a week(month? i forget), but he was online around the clock.
Good luck with your endeavors if you are successful with your fundraising attempts. The thought of a 200k pedcard to plan a space business again almost makes me want to have another go at it
(disclaimer, I have been out of the space business a few years so apologies if any of my memories are off)
