Money, pricing & model

Your business model, what to charge, and whether the numbers work.

What founders use for money, pricing & model, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. This is the practical companion to charging early: how to set a first customer rate you can raise later without making early... The Bootstrapped Founder Article · ~10 min read Your Initial Pricing Will Never Be Right, But Try Anyway Arvid Kahl
  2. This lays out the exact tension in the question: a lifetime deal hands you $50k to $500k today, but those buyers keep consuming... Dodo Payments Article · about 8 min read Why Lifetime Deals (LTDs) are a Double-Edged Sword for SaaS Aarthi Poonia
  3. An Indian founder recounts running lifetime deals twice, selling $500k to 4,000 buyers on AppSumo, and then living with what... B2B SaaS Podcast Podcast · about 35 min listen How I sold lifetime deals worth $500k on AppSumo & why you should be careful with LTDs Ananay Batra (Listnr), on the B2B SaaS Podcast
  4. Most pieces on this question are payment vendors selling you a billing model, so they always land on subscriptions. This is a... Indie Hackers Essay Subscriptions vs. One-Time Payments: A Developer's Honest Take Smoteria
  5. Video Subscription Models vs One Time Purchase: Bridge the Debate Soren Kaplan
  6. This is the rare piece that answers the currency question the way an Indian founder actually hits it: the GST angle (invoicing... Skydo Article Should I Invoice in INR or Foreign Currency? Sukanya (reviewed by CA Akshay Kumar), Skydo
  7. SaaSBoomi is the community of Indian SaaS founders, so when its hosts work through pricing plans (product, perceived value,... SaaSBoomi Podcast Getting SaaS Pricing Right (SaaSBoomi Podcast) SaaSBoomi (hosts Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor)
  8. This is the vendor-neutral walkthrough of how to actually structure a pricing test so you can trust the result. It starts with... Stripe Article Pricing experiments: A guide for businesses Stripe
  9. Before you touch live traffic, the cheapest way to read price sensitivity is to just ask people, and the Van Westendorp method... OpinionX Tool Van Westendorp for Pricing Research: A Survey Guide Daniel Kyne
  10. Most pricing advice stays abstract, so here is a real writeup of an experiment with the numbers left in. They raised the... Conversion.com Essay Using experimentation to find a product's optimal price (and increase RPV by 16% in the process) Stephen Pavlovich
  11. This is the exact question you are asking, answered by someone who has sold a lot of enterprise software. Lemkin gives you a... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: Our Biggest Customers Are All Asking for Custom Features. When Do We Say Yes? Jason Lemkin
  12. Before you say yes to the custom features nobody else wants, this essay makes you sit with the real risk: one account that pays... Startup Patterns (Medium) Essay The One Big Customer Trap Sam McAfee
  13. This is the clearest single write-up on why an annual plan exists in the first place: it front-loads cash and it holds people... Paddle Article · About a 12 minute read Annual plans: Why every SaaS company needs to sell them Paddle
  14. Video · About 12 minutes I looked at 105 SaaS pricing pages. Here's what I learned. Slidebean
  15. If you decide usage pricing is right, this is real billing infrastructure that meters events in real time and lets you set... Metronome Tool · Product site, plus docs Metronome: Usage-Based Billing Platform Metronome (now part of Stripe)
  16. This tackles the exact fear you named: a buyer who wants your product but cannot predict the bill, and sometimes builds it... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · About 8 minute read Customers Want Predictability in Usage-based Pricing. Here's How to Help Them Get It. Tugce Erten and Mark Regan
  17. This is the cleanest head-to-head on the exact question you are asking: it puts the two models side by side, gives real... HelloAdvisr Essay · ~10 min read Should I offer freemium or free trial, which drives better growth? HelloAdvisr
  18. Once you have decided free is worth trying, this is the practical follow-through: a step by step way to decide what stays free,... RevenueCat Article · ~15 min read 6 Steps To Design A Freemium Tier That Actually Converts Daphne Tideman
  19. This is a focused, plain-language piece on the exact trap in the question: a low blended CAC that quietly counts customers you... Eightx Article · Short read (10 to 12 min) What Is Blended CAC vs Paid CAC? Matt Putra
  20. This is the piece that made cohort-based LTV the default way serious investors think, and it is exactly the right medicine when... Social Capital / The Startup (Medium) Article · About 20 minute read Diligence at Social Capital, Part 3: Cohorts and (revenue) LTV Jonathan Hsu
  21. Video · Short explainer (under 15 minutes) Customer Retention & Cohort Analysis: How VCs Calculate Customer Retention YouTube
  22. This is the template to stop guessing a single LTV number and plot your actual cohorts instead. You type in only the basics... andrewchen.com Tool · Downloadable Excel template plus short guide The easiest spreadsheet for churn, MRR, and cohort analysis Christoph Janz (Point Nine Capital), guest post on Andrew Chen's blog
  23. This is the cleanest plain-language separation of the two margins we found, and it walks through both formulas with actual... Shopify Article · About 8 minute read Contribution Margin vs. Gross Margin: What's the Difference? Shopify
  24. Video · About 5 minutes Contribution Margin explained Philip de Vroe (The Finance Storyteller)

Show the next 24

The questions

Business models explained 18

How the money actually flows.

What business model should I choose for my startup? 3 → What's the difference between SaaS, marketplace, and transactional business models? 3 → How do I make money from a free product or freemium model? 3 → How does a marketplace actually make money and solve the chicken-and-egg problem? 3 → Should I sell to businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C)? 2 → All 18 questions in Business models explained →
Pricing & packaging 18

Charge money. Charge more. Here's how.

How do I decide how much to charge for my product? 3 → What is a value metric and why does it matter for pricing? 2 → How many pricing tiers should I have and how should I package them? 3 → Am I charging too little for my product? 3 → How do I raise prices without losing my existing customers? 3 → All 18 questions in Pricing & packaging →
Unit economics & modeling 18

Know what a customer costs and earns.

What are unit economics and why do they matter? 3 → How do I calculate CAC (customer acquisition cost) and LTV? 3 → What is a good LTV to CAC ratio? 3 → What metrics should I actually track as an early-stage SaaS founder? 3 → How do I build a simple financial model or revenue projection? 3 → All 18 questions in Unit economics & modeling →
Bootstrapping & profitability 18

Grow on customer money, keep control.

Can I really build a successful startup without raising money? 3 → How do I bootstrap a startup with little or no money? 3 → How did Zoho and Zerodha bootstrap to billion-dollar companies? 3 → How do I reach profitability (or ramen profitability) as fast as possible? 3 → Bootstrapping vs raising VC, how do I decide? 3 → All 18 questions in Bootstrapping & profitability →
Startup finance & accounting 18

Keep the books, watch the runway.

What financial basics does every founder need to understand? 2 → What is burn rate and runway, and how do I calculate them? 2 → How should I manage cash flow so my startup doesn't run out of money? 3 → Do I need an accountant and proper bookkeeping from day one? 2 → What taxes and compliance do I need to handle as an Indian startup? 1 → All 18 questions in Startup finance & accounting →
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