This morning Brian and I spent some time chatting with Dana Oshiro at Heavybit about some of the common questions that we hear from folks who are trying to build companies in the developer-facing B2B space. Dana remarked that lots of people approach her with questions about pricing, and Brian and I nodded vigorously — we’ve seen the same thing.
The issue with the volume of questions about pricing is that they tend to come without accompanying questions about two other extremely important things that are fundamental parts of any pricing equation: the product you’re selling and the **market **it serves. I think about it like this:
You have to know two to be able to figure out the third.
If you want to talk about the price, you need to be confident about your product, and the market it will serve.
It’s possible to start up front by talking about the price you’d like to charge for your product, but you have to understand: this will limit the decisions you can make about your product and the market it will serve. Since most founders who sell software to developers tend to start out with an idea (“I want to revolutionize monitoring!”) and not a market segment (“I want to sell to Enterprise!”), the equation is simplified: you must figure out your product and market first, and worry about the price once those are clearer.
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