Pricing v1: How to Charge Before Anyone Has Paid You

Pricing v1 is the decision founders agonise over for weeks and then change three times in the first quarter anyway. The goal of v1 is not to be right. It is to be defensible enough to put in front of a buyer so you can learn what the market will actually bear.

The three pricing logics

• Cost-plus — calculate cost-to-serve, add a margin. Safe, but caps your upside.
• Competitor-based — anchor to the closest existing alternative. Useful as a sanity check, dangerous as a strategy.
• Value-based — price as a fraction of the value created. The right answer long-term, but you need real data to land it.

How to set v1 in 60 minutes

Estimate the total annual cost or pain you remove for a typical customer. Take 10–20% of that number as the annual contract value. Cross-check against the closest competitor. If you are 3x more expensive, you need a clear reason. If you are cheaper, you are leaving money on the table — buyers use price as a quality signal.

The three-tier trap

Every SaaS landing page has Starter / Pro / Enterprise. Founders copy the pattern before they have one paying customer. Skip it. Until you have closed ten deals, run with one price for everyone. Three tiers force you to invent feature gates that distort your roadmap.

Anchoring techniques that work in v1

Quote a range, then a number. 'Pilots are typically £15k–£40k. For what you have described, I would expect £25k.' The range establishes the market; the number gets the decision.

Annual contracts only. Monthly billing is for products with frictionless self-serve onboarding. If you are doing a sales-led pilot, lock in 12 months.

Make the discount visible and rare. List price £30k, founding-customer price £20k, three slots only. The discount earns you the close, the rarity earns you the next price hike.

When to raise prices

Three signals: nobody objects to price, your win rate is above 50% on qualified opportunities, or you cannot keep up with delivery at current pricing. The best time to raise is just before a launch, a new feature, or a new logo announcement — give yourself a narrative.