The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Lenny's Podcast)
The single best hour on willingness-to-pay conversations, from the Monetizing Innovation author.
Listen on Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com →Have the willingness-to-pay conversation early: ask real prospects what feels acceptable, expensive, and prohibitively expensive, or run a short Van Westendorp survey (four questions, plottable in a spreadsheet, famously how OpenAI landed on $20 for ChatGPT Plus). AI helps you draft the survey, simulate objections, analyze responses, and benchmark competitor pricing, but it cannot tell you what your customers will pay, only they can. Anchor on value conversations first, survey data second, AI synthesis third.
A quick orientation. The real value is below: resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it.
The single best hour on willingness-to-pay conversations, from the Monetizing Innovation author.
Listen on Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com →The 2025 update covering how AI products specifically should be priced and tested.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →The most complete founder-level WTP methodology reference.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →The classic argument for testing price before building, still the mindset that matters.
Open review.firstround.com →A structured overview of SaaS pricing strategy to frame your research.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →The most practical how-to for running the four-question price sensitivity survey.
Open opinionx.co →OpenAI priced ChatGPT Plus with a Google Form and Van Westendorp, the perfect founder anecdote.
Open strategence-us.com →Clear explanation of reading the four intersecting price curves.
Open mainbrainresearch.com →A researcher's honest take on the method's assumptions and failure modes.
Open fullstackresearcher.substack.com →When to graduate from Van Westendorp to conjoint analysis as stakes rise.
Open getmonetizely.com →A billing-infrastructure company's practical framing for SaaS founders.
Open getlago.com →Step-by-step execution detail including sample sizes that make results meaningful.
Open quali-fi.com →An off-the-shelf survey instrument if you want the rigorous version pre-built.
Open qualtrics.com →How to turn one-off pricing research into a repeatable internal capability.
Open akashbajwa.co →