Pricing Strategies for your Startup (Part 1)
Thursday 1 March 2018, 12pm – 12:45pm @River City Labs
level 3, 315 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley
This event will provide an introduction to and discussion around pricing strategies for startups.
This topic is ideal for those seeking to improve their understanding of pricing strategy. There will be approximately 30 mins of content and 30 mins of discussions Q&A. According to Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price), there are only three pricing for startups:
1) Maximization
2) Penetration
3) Skimming
Maximization (Revenue Growth) – maximize revenue growth in the short term. Startups should pursue maximization when there are no clear differences in customer segments’ willingness to pay, and when the optimal short term and long term prices are equal. Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale.
Penetration (Market Share) – price the product at a low price to win dominant market share. A bottoms-up strategy lends itself to penetration pricing. Price low to minimize adoption friction, grow quickly, and then move up-market after developing broad adoption. Penetration pricing leads to land-and-expand sales tactics. Expensify, Netsuite, New Relic, Slack follow this model. Penetration prioritizes market share.
Skimming (Profit Maximization) – start with a high price and systematically broaden the product offering to address more of the customer base at lower prices. Skimming is widespread in consumer hardware. Apple sells the latest iPhones at the highest prices, and repackages older models at lower prices to address different customer segments. As Madhavan tells it, Steve Jobs was both a product genius and pricing genius. By pairing the two skills, he led Apple to record-breaking profits quarter after quarter.
Important to know
Event slides are available on the Resources page.