2 founders answer

How do you protect your pricing model when VCs keep telling you it's broken?

InDebted's outcome-based pricing — taking a percentage of collections recovered — was attacked constantly: "your pricing model sucks I would never invest in that company." Josh's biggest regret was giving in. He rebuilt the model fifteen times based on feedback, then came back to the same model he started with. Now that outcome-based pricing is fashionable again, he's been fully vindicated.

2 founders on this question

Different founders, different playbooks. Here's how each answered — preview first, full take one click away.

JF
Josh Foreman
InDebted · EP 32

InDebted's outcome-based pricing — taking a percentage of collections recovered — was attacked constantly: "your pricing model sucks I would never invest in that company." Josh's biggest regret was giving in.

See Josh Foreman's full take

"I attempted to honestly rebuild that 15 times because of feedback from people... it's the same freaking pricing model that it was when we started." The lesson isn't that feedback is wrong — it's that feedback from a fifteen-minute conversation is weighted against 50,000 hours of your own reps. "That new person that you meet for 15 minutes has spent 15 minutes and you've spent 50,000 hours... in front of clients and customers and investors." Josh calls the pricing capitulation one of his worst decisions because it cost time without changing the outcome.

JF
Josh Foreman
InDebted · EP 32

InDebted's outcome-based pricing — taking a percentage of collections recovered — was attacked constantly: "your pricing model sucks I would never invest in that company." Josh's biggest regret was giving in.

See Josh Foreman's full take

"I attempted to honestly rebuild that 15 times because of feedback from people... it's the same freaking pricing model that it was when we started." The lesson isn't that feedback is wrong — it's that feedback from a fifteen-minute conversation is weighted against 50,000 hours of your own reps. "That new person that you meet for 15 minutes has spent 15 minutes and you've spent 50,000 hours... in front of clients and customers and investors." Josh calls the pricing capitulation one of his worst decisions because it cost time without changing the outcome.