I’m betting that in about 2 seconds you’re going to roll your eyes, delete this email, and move on with your day. 😂

Because I’m going to talk about pricing. 

Please allow me to convince you that it’s far more exciting than it seems.

Why?

Because it’s the easiest way to add profit to your business.

Like most founders, I was obsessed with product, marketing, and sales — because those felt like the real growth levers. But pricing? That was never a priority, even six years into building my company.

Until I met Patrick Campbell.

Patrick led his company ProfitWell to a $200 million exit, and has spent over a decade studying pricing. He’s analyzed hundreds of startups, closely examining how pricing impacts both growth and profitability.

And after hosting a workshop with him, I realized just how much money I had been leaving on the table, because—

Pricing is the most underutilized growth lever in any business.

And it’s not just about raising prices (though you should be doing that regularly). There are countless overlooked opportunities to optimize pricing — most of which can have a significant impact on your business. 

Patrick recommends startups revisit their pricing at least once a quarter. That might sound like a lot, but I’ve seen firsthand how even small adjustments can drive meaningful results.

After that workshop, I sat down with my team to rethink our approach to pricing. 

The result? 

Even without massive revenue growth, our profitability shot up.

I’ve also seen my founder friends implement Patrick’s practices with incredible results.

So here’s my advice:

• Check out the breakdown of what I learned from Patrick below.

• And go watch the workshop for a much deeper drive.

Most founders set pricing arbitrarily

The typical founder’s approach to pricing looks like this:

• Look at competitors.

• Pick a number that “feels right.”

• Set it and forget it.

Sound familiar?

But your pricing should be based on value, not vibes.

Patrick calls pricing "the exchange rate on the value you create." If you’re undercharging, you’re leaving money on the table. If you’re overcharging the wrong customers, you’re missing out on sales.

The best companies continuously optimize their pricing — just like they optimize sales and marketing.

Finding your value metric

We’ve all seen this:

The tiered pricing model is widely deployed across subscription and software businesses. And while it’s a great place to start, it can sometimes distract us from the one thing you should be basing your pricing on—

Your value metric.

A value metric is the thing your customers care about most, and it’s heavily based on who you’re selling to. For HubSpot, it’s contacts. For Slack, it’s users. For AWS, it’s computing power.

If you charge based on a clear value metric, your revenue scales with customer success. The best customers pay more because they get more value.

Here’s how to figure out yours:

⬛ ASK: What’s the most concise measure of the value of your product?

In most B2B cases, it will be one of three things:

1. Money made

2. Money saved

3. Time saved

⬛ LIST: Make a list of 5-10 measurable proxies of that value, such as:

1. Number of users

2. Number of features

3. Number of API calls

4. Number or value of transactions

5. Amount of storage

It will probably be easy for you to come up with the first couple, but force yourself to list at least five.

⬛ SURVEY: Take your proxy list to your customers and ask two questions:

1. Which one of the proxies would they most prefer to pay based on.

2. Which of the proxies would they least prefer to pay based on.

Chart the data you create into a histogram, but pay attention to outliers, because they will help you strategize for upmarket and downmarket expansion.

Then go deeper

It’s easy to look at a competitor’s tiered pricing model thinking, “ok, they have 3 tiers,” — and assume that’s the monetization structure on which they’ve built their entire business.

But that’s probably not the case.

According to Patrick’s research, the fastest growing consumer mobile apps have an average of 12 pricing tiers, and in B2B SaaS, it’s an average of 15 pricing tiers.

While you’d think that kind of strategy would make customers go cross-eyed, the trick is that users never actually see more than a few tiers at a time. 

Instead, they’re led through an upgrade (or even downgrade) path of “shadow tiers” that allows them to take advantage of things like:

• Higher (or lower) quantities of things they’re using (like contacts or data)

• Or additional features (like priority customer service or AI automations)

This is all presented to them based on their behavior to ensure they’re squeezing as much value out of the product as possible. 

Customers who buy add-ons usually have a 20-50% higher LTV, not just because they pay more, but because they’re receiving the value that’s most important to them — so they churn less.

In fact, a simple audit of potential add-on features, such as priority customer support, can add around 10% of pure profit to your bottom line — since it usually requires no extra resources to simply flag a support ticket as “priority”.

So get on it

If your pricing hasn’t changed in the last year, you’re probably losing money.

Take an hour this week to review your pricing:

• Are you using a clear value metric?

• Are you regularly testing and iterating?

• Are you charging more to customers who get more value?

Even a small pricing tweak can have a massive impact on revenue.

–Aleksandr

P.S. – If you want to go deeper, hit reply and let me know — I’ll send over some of Patrick’s best pricing templates.

A Q&A with Rob Litterst

I sat down with Rob Litterst, co-founder of the pricing intelligence platform PricingSaaS, and author of Good Better Best, a weekly digest on SaaS pricing and packaging strategy.

—

Question 1: How can companies most easily make sense of their pricing experiments? 

ROB: This is kind of a loaded question because pricing experiments can take a lot of forms. It can be something as simple as A/B testing the pricing page to piloting a new product with active customers. Regardless of what you’re experimenting with, there are 3 things you can do to ensure a more actionable outcome.

1. Define Your Goal

Every pricing experiment should start with a clear goal. Ask yourself:

• Are you trying to increase demo requests, trials, signups, revenue?

Starting with the goal will make sure you have a clear scorecard for success when the experiment wraps.

2. Ensure You Can Measure Success

You need reliable tracking in place before running an experiment. Make sure you have:

• A/B testing tools (e.g., Optimizely, Google Optimize)

• Feature flagging (e.g., Statsig, LaunchDarkly)

• Billing & analytics integrations (e.g., Stripe, Amplitude)

Your systems should allow you to track conversion rates and deeper engagement metrics without friction.

3. Pre-Align on Next Steps

One of the biggest challenges with pricing is cross-functional alignment — it touches Product, Sales, Finance, and Marketing. Before launching an experiment, align on:

• Who owns the decision (ideally, a clear DRI)

• What success looks like (e.g., a +10% lift in trial conversion means we roll it out)

• How changes will be implemented (so you’re not scrambling for approvals afterward)

Regardless of the type, the same three pillars apply: clear goals, measurable outcomes, and pre-aligned action steps.

—

Question 2: What are the risks when a company wants to expand upmarket or downmarket, and how can those risks be mitigated?

ROB: Shifting your target customer—whether moving upmarket or downmarket—risks alienating your existing base if you’re not careful.

SaaS companies often face this when transitioning between sales-led and product-led motions.

The key to navigating this shift successfully is a flexible pricing strategy that supports different customer types. This means:

• Using thoughtful consumption limits to ensure pricing scales with usage

• Aligning features and functionality to match different personas

• Offering support tiers that fit both SMBs and enterprises

Notion and HubSpot do this well, serving both startups and large enterprises with adaptable pricing and packaging. Get it right, and you can grow across segments without leaving anyone behind.

—

Question 3: What book changed your life, and why?

ROB: Choosing a single book is so hard, but if I had to choose one, it would be The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Before reading it, I barely thought about what I was eating. Ever since, I’ve gone down a million diet rabbit-holes, but always come back to Pollan’s simple advice:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Catch you next Sunday!