Hey friends 👋
Let’s talk about something that trips up almost every early-stage founder:
Pricing.
If you’ve ever agonized over what to charge, when to charge it, and how to explain your pricing to customers (or investors) without sounding like you pulled it out of a hat — you’re not alone. Pricing is one of the most squishy decisions you’ll make. And yet, it’s one of the most important.
In this week’s Office Hours, Cam and I tackled:
Why pricing is never just about price — it’s about your value proposition, target customer, and traction signals
How to test and validate your pricing like an experiment (not a guess)
The difference between pricing what you built vs what customers value
How to talk to customers about pricing without torpedoing the conversation
And why your pricing model is actually one of your most powerful startup hypotheses
If your current pricing strategy is basically “$99/mo seems reasonable,” consider this a wake-up call. You don’t need to have perfect pricing out of the gate — you need a testable hypothesis and a plan to learn.
And hey — if you want the full mental model for how we think about startup validation, you can watch last week’s Office Hours on the Traction Model.
As always, I go live every Friday at noon PT to talk startups and answer your questions — sometimes solo, sometimes with guests. Bring your sticky questions. We’ll tackle them together.
—jdm
PS: this session was originally hosted on LinkedIn Live on May 1st. We are posting a replay this week because Cam and I are out of town at the NorCal Venture Conference judging a pitch competition.
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