Founder Topic

How do early-stage founders price their product?

The archive's consensus: pricing is an experiment, not a formula. Hamish McKay repriced Order Editing every two months, walking it from $400 to $600 a month to find willingness to pay. Floriye Elmazi positioned Sisterwould premium first, then lowered the price as scale allowed. The deeper lesson from Josh Foreman at InDebted: when a pricing model reflects genuine customer value, defend it — his biggest regret is rebuilding it 15 times on investor feedback only to end up where he started.

Pricing is the decision founders revisit most and research least. The Founders In Motion archive covers pricing a SaaS product with no customers, pricing premium consumer goods against giants, pricing robots against labor costs, and defending an unfashionable pricing model against years of investor pressure.

Quick answers

How do I price with no customers yet?

Keep testing upward. Hamish McKay launched Order Editing "at like four hundred dollars a month," then asked "can we sell it at 500," found out they could, then 600 — changing pricing almost every two months to discover willingness to pay. Caroline Tran's variant: give the first customer a reasonable (not cheap) price, then let the market supply data points.

How should I price a premium consumer product?

Decide what you are first — FMCG, premium, or in-between — then check the margins sustain the business. Floriye Elmazi launched Sisterwould at $58 with a Sephora-level vision, and only reduced to $39 after two and a half years of scale. Andy Miller at Heaps Normal sometimes held or cut prices as they scaled, passing economies of scale to drinkers because accessibility was part of the brand.

How do you price against an existing cost, like labor?

Anchor to what you replace. Dyna Robotics rents robots at several grand a month rather than selling hardware — on par with or cheaper than typical US labor cost — because their restaurant customers are price-sensitive and low-margin.

What founders in the archive say

EP 15
Hamish McKay · Order Editing

He Built a Shopify App for MrBeast, Now It's Doing $2M ARR

Hamish McKay co-founded Order Editing, a Shopify app that gives online shoppers a "Grace period" to change their order after checkout — and hit a million in AR in the first year by building in public and refusing venture capital.

$1MA million in AR hit within the first year, building in public with no venture capital
"the majority of the time we've just built our own technology like our own IP that guarantees that that system doesn't get the order until we say so"—
↗
EP 9
Floriye Elmazi · Sisterwould

I Sold My Car & Built a Cult Haircare Startup Founder Story

Floriye sold her car to start a hair care brand she didn't set out to build — and ended up shipping Sisterwould to Lindsay Lohan, Dua Lipa and Nicole Kidman, with Braille on every bottle.

2.2 billionPeople who suffer from blind and visual impairments
"we should be treating our hair the same way we do the skin on our face — Floriye, on the insight behind Sisterwould (03:06) there's 2.2 billion people that suffer from blind and visual impairments and only 15% of them can actually read Braille — Floriye, on why the product has Braille (03:29) I sold my car and I thought that'll be enough to start a business — Floriye, on what it really takes to bootstrap (07:40) opportunity doesn't just come you have to go and get that opportunity — Floriye, on landing retail partnerships (16:45) Lindsay Lohan gave us her personal number to then ship out her products — Floriye, on how the celebrity placements happened (17:43) perfect is unachievable — Floriye, on launching before you feel ready (08:18)"—
↗
EP 19
Andy Miller · Heaps Normal

Building a $50M+ Zero Alcohol Global Craft Beer Brand

Summer beer, winter launch, unknown brand, mid-pandemic, and non-alcoholic. Kitchen-kettle XPA brewed in longneck bottles. Robbie Williams on the cap table. $50M+ B Corp. Andy Miller on building Heaps Normal into Australia's biggest non-alc beer brand.

$50M+Brand valuation. Built from a kitchen-kettle prototype and pandemic-era hand delivery.
"You're launching a summer beer style, in the middle of winter, with an unknown brand, and it's non-alcoholic."— A journalist describing the Heaps Normal launch, repeated by Andy (03:35)
↗
EP 32
Josh Foreman · InDebted

$350M Fintech Founder Steps Down as CEO to Rebuild With AI

Ten years into building InDebted into one of the biggest debt collection software companies in the world, Josh Foreman stepped down as CEO to rebuild it from its core — because the competitor he fears most is an AI-native version of himself, starting today with nothing to protect.

$12 → $1M/weekfrom the first revenue Josh remembers "like it was yesterday" to over $1 million a week today
"Now I'm so confident on the ability for the business to compound over the long term that I have to think about a world where the business exists without even me in it."—
↗

Related topics