Do you even need pricing? 3 Principles to price your early-stage product.

Just had a meeting with a great company talking about their pricing. I shared my pricing principles for early-stage companies and thought I’d share here. Here are the 3 principles I share with early devtool founders:

1. Do you even need pricing to launch? If you are optimizing for adoption and growth consider launching without unit pricing figured out. Just be honest with your first developers that pricing is coming.

2. Pricing should be based on value to your customer. On your pricing page, make sure that you understand what your customer finds valuable. If your killer feature is locked behind a premium paywall, and you are PLG company, then I may never get to experience your killer feature. Another example: if you are an API and you are pricing by requests, ask yourself why? Are developers using your product to get a certain number of requests per month? Or are they using it to allow their customers to unlock something great. Consider pricing by “success” or by “happy customer”.

3. Assume that your competitors pricing is broken. Do not assume that the pricing your competitor is showing on their pricing page is working for them. Instead assume their customers are saying “how in the hell do I predict my pricing?” and that their board is showing up every month saying “why aren’t people you paying you the right amount?“.

Learn more before you anchor your amazing product at a price. Use design-thinking to discover the value for your customers and make sure your pricing page is working for you not against you. Do this and you will be sure your pricing page does not hurt your brand.

🤔If you need help formulating a kick-ass pricing strategy, I can help. I’ve done it for some of the biggest developer brands on the planet. Book some time with me and we can make your brand one of those that developers love.