InDebted's contingency model — take a percentage of dollars successfully recovered, get paid nothing otherwise — was attacked by venture investors for years: "your pricing model sucks, I would never invest in that company." Josh's biggest regret is giving in: "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."
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The industry's contingency performance model exists for a hard structural reason: global accounting standards force lenders to write off accounts once they reach a certain age overdue. "No good thinking CFO is gonna go, I should spend a dollar chasing an account I've lost $100 on... because now you've lost $101." Outcome-based pricing is the only way the economics work for the client.
Venture investors wanted predictability and recurring revenue, so Josh spent a lot of time trying to make a different way — "and that was a mistake, big mistake. You try push too far against the grain, you try and get too creative, you don't just accept the reality for what it is."
The vindication came with the AI era: "SaaS is no longer cool and everyone loves predictable... outcome based revenue." Today the pitch aligns incentives perfectly: "We helped you recover $100 million last year and we kept 10, we gave you 90... there's now $90 million in new revenue into your business, and we got 10 million. We took all the risk."