Thanks for starting this conversation, @appbuildernyc. And for adding your thoughts, @mikeS. 
A lot of these points do resonate and certainly are informing the way we think about the future. For the sake of organization, I'm going to move this topic over into the 
Discussion category.
As somebody that interfaces with the broader community on a daily basis, this comment is particularly meaningful to me! Our platform absolutely should scale alongside companies and generally democratize software development. I'm sorry that past conversations with the Sales team have been unproductive, and would be happy to facilitate a new one, if you’re open to it! That goes for anybody that is interested in growing their use case.
To directly address your primary question, though, we are very actively thinking through pricing and packaging in the age of AI. It’s important to us that we get this right. Certain features will always be gated, but never with the intention of hamstringing smaller teams.
The API is actually a great example. Retool has historically been a fairly closed system, with most (but not all) endpoints gated to Enterprise plans. The new MCP is a drastic departure from that. All existing tools are available at all plan levels and we are similarly evaluating access to other areas of the product, including the API itself. I encourage you to read through the vision for a more "open" Retool that our CEO David shared back in March. We'll have more to share soon on the new building experience!
Let me know if you want me to expand on anything or have any additional questions! I'm also interested in helping to diagnose the performance issues you mentioned. I'll dig into some of our backend logging to see if anything jumps out, but it might also be helpful to have you join Office Hours next week. 