Decisions — pricing
Pricing is the decision solo founders get wrong alone.
No co-founder to argue with. No board to convince. Just you, a number you picked two years ago, and the fear of losing the customers you already have. A decision brief puts structure around that call — the questions to answer, the frameworks that fit, and the criteria to decide by — before you commit.
- Structure
- 7 sections
- Turnaround
- Under 24h
- Guarantee
- Money-back
Alone, every pricing instinct pulls the same direction: down.
Not because you're bad at this — because there's no one in the room built to push back.
Anchored on costs
You price from your costs and your nerve. Your customers price from the value of the problem you remove. The gap between those two numbers is money you're leaving on the table every month.
No one to argue with
A team debates a raise; a solo founder rationalizes the status quo. Without a structured counter-argument, the loudest voice in the room is the fear of churn.
Set once, never touched
The launch price quietly becomes the forever price. Meanwhile the product got better, the market moved, and the number stayed where your launch-day confidence left it.
A decision brief is the argument you don't have anyone to have.
Describe your pricing call. Within 24 hours you get a structured, reasoned brief — seven sections, always the same spine: the decision framed, the key questions to answer first, the frameworks that fit, decision criteria, sources to consult, next steps, and when to escalate.
From a real brief our generator produced — the opening section, verbatim
YourBrief.io Decision Brief
Raising our SaaS price from $29 to $79
Solo founder · Within 1 week
The decision
The decision: Move your single plan from $29 to $79/month for new customers only (existing 270 grandfathered at $29 for 12 months), versus holding at $29 and betting on volume growth to reach a livable income.
My read: this is a two-way door — treat it as one. Because you're only changing the price for new signups and grandfathering everyone who already pays you, the downside is capped at new signups from the test window. If $79 stalls conversion, you revert the page to $29 (or $49) next week and you've lost a few dozen trials, not a dollar of existing MRR. That is the opposite of a bet-the-company move. Given that, do not over-deliberate — run the price live and read the data. The only genuinely irreversible piece is the grandfather promise; once you tell 270 people "$29 for 12 months," you own that. So the reversible experiment is the new price; the one-way commitment is the grandfather clause, and you should word it carefully (see Next steps).
The strategic fact underneath this: at $8k MRR with growing support load and no team, volume growth is actively hostile to you — every new $29 customer adds support minutes that eat the build time you need to stay competitive with $99 and $149 rivals. Price is the lever that fixes MRR and support load at once.
That's one of seven sections. Read 4 complete briefs on the examples page — published in full, so you can judge the product before paying for it.
The pricing calls worth briefing.
Recognize yours? Start from it — the form arrives pre-filled and you edit the numbers to match your reality.
The raise you keep postponing
“Should we raise our price from $29 to $79?”
What you’d have to believe about churn, value, and your best customers for a 2–3× raise to be right.
Flat vs usage-based
“Should we switch from a flat monthly price to usage-based pricing?”
Whether your cost structure and buyer behavior actually fit metered pricing, or you’d just be importing Snowflake’s homework.
The free-tier question
“Should we kill our free tier and move to a 14-day trial?”
Who your free tier is really serving — future customers, or people who were never going to pay.
Annual discount depth
“Should we offer annual plans at a discount, and how deep should the discount be?”
Cash-flow now vs revenue later, and where the discount stops being an incentive and starts being a leak.
Not deciding this week?
The Decision — free
The first issue is being written. One worked decision each time, in public.
The reasoning behind consequential product calls — including the ones we get wrong. No spam, no reselling your address, unsubscribe anytime.
Next steps
Raise it, restructure it, or leave it — decide it.
One pricing decision, thought all the way through. $49, delivered within 24 hours, money-back if it isn't actionable.