cdeistopened Pricing Optimizer
Walk a founder through pricing strategy using Patrick Campbell's (ProfitWell) data-driven framework, Sam Parr's event pricing playbook, and Shaan Puri's willingness-to-pay heuristics from My First Million.
When to Use
The user wants to set or adjust pricing for their product or service. They might say:
- "How should I price this?"
- "Am I charging too much or too little?"
- "Help me figure out my pricing strategy"
- "I want to raise prices but I'm nervous"
The Core Principle
From Shaan Puri (biuC4bUMvV0.md):
"Unless half the people are saying no, you're priced way too low."
Most founders underprice. The fear of losing customers is almost always greater than the actual loss from raising prices. If everyone says yes, you have room to charge more.
Phase 1: Pricing Diagnostic
Ask the user:
- What do you sell? (Product, service, subscription, one-time)
- Current price: $___
- What percentage of prospects say yes at this price? ___%
- When was the last time you changed pricing? ___
- Do you know what competitors charge? ___
Patrick Campbell's diagnostic metric (6Ui-FxhUUPU.md):
"Revenue per customer should be going up and to the right. The average time between price increases is three years. I've seen so many companies leave money on the table because they're scared."
If revenue per customer has been flat for 12+ months, pricing is the first lever to pull.
Phase 2: The Three Levers
From Patrick Campbell's framework based on hundreds of thousands of willingness-to-pay data points:
Lever 1: Add-Ons
"Add-ons boost lifetime value by 20-50%. Most high-growth subscription companies have 12 or more add-ons. The customer never sees all twelve, but they'll see one or two, and one will convert."
Walk the user through:
- What do customers frequently ask for that isn't in the core product?
- What adjacent service could you offer as an upsell?
- What "premium" version of a feature could be gated?
The add-on doesn't need to be a big engineering effort. It can be: priority support, white-glove onboarding, custom reporting, extended warranties, done-for-you services.
Rule of thumb: If your product has fewer than 3 add-on/upsell options, you're leaving 20-50% of potential LTV on the table.
Lever 2: Localization
"The Nordics are willing to pay ~30% higher than the US for the exact same product. Southeast Asia is ~40% less. A quick win that boosts revenue per customer by 15-20%."
If the user sells internationally:
- Are you charging the same price everywhere?
- Can you adjust by country/region?
- Even simple geo-based pricing (3-4 tiers: US/EU/Asia/Rest of World) can capture significant revenue.
Lever 3: Packaging and Tiers
From Sam Parr's event pricing (TTyLa4NsOKI.md):
"Set the list price higher than your target average. If you want $100 average, list at $250. Use discounts generously to pull the average down to target."
Sam's event tier system:
- Early-early bird (biggest discount, smallest window)
- Early bird
- Regular
- Late / at-the-door (full price)
Each tier ending creates a revenue spike from urgency. "There's a direct correlation between revenue that day and the tier ending."
For SaaS/products: The same principle applies — create 3 tiers (Good/Better/Best) where the middle tier is the one you want most people to buy. The top tier exists to make the middle feel reasonable (anchoring).
Phase 3: The Pricing Change Cadence
From Patrick Campbell:
"Change something about your pricing every 3 months. Not necessarily raising price — could be packaging, add-on, discounting structure, or going up-market or down-market."
Help the user build a quarterly pricing calendar:
- Q1: [Change one thing — e.g., add an upsell]
- Q2: [Change one thing — e.g., test a price increase on new customers]
- Q3: [Change one thing — e.g., introduce localized pricing]
- Q4: [Change one thing — e.g., restructure tiers]
Each quarter, measure: revenue per customer, conversion rate, churn rate. The goal is revenue per customer trending up without churn spiking.
Phase 4: How to Actually Raise Prices
On new customers: Just do it. Change the price page. Most founders agonize over this — the data says most customers won't notice or care.
On existing customers:
- Grandfather the best customers (loyalty reward)
- Give 30-60 days notice
- Frame it around value added, not cost increase: "We've added X, Y, Z since you signed up"
- Expect 2-5% churn. If churn is under 5%, the price increase was worth it.
Patrick Campbell's confidence note:
"Give them pricing and they all go: 'I don't know, what do you think?' Because it touches every area of the business and they lack the confidence. Starting with an add-on is typically the gateway."
If the user is nervous about raising prices, start with an add-on instead. It's less scary (existing price stays the same) but still increases revenue per customer.
Phase 5: Search the Archive
The MFM transcripts contain dozens of pricing discussions across industries:
grep -ri "pricing\|how much.*charge\|raised.*price" transcripts/
grep -ri "willingness to pay\|price point\|price test" transcripts/
Search for the user's specific industry — there may be a relevant episode with pricing benchmarks.
Output
After the session, deliver:
- Pricing diagnostic — are they underpriced? (Almost certainly yes.)
- Immediate action — the one change to make this week
- Add-on opportunities — 2-3 upsell ideas with estimated LTV impact
- Quarterly pricing calendar — 4 changes over the next year
- Price increase plan — for new customers and existing customers separately
- Tracking metrics — revenue per customer, conversion rate, churn