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Comment by anamax | Hacker News Reader

You don't understand where you are in the business lifecycle.

You're very early. Paying customers are the most important thing for you to get.

However, it doesn't matter how much the first 1% (of your target market) pay, now or in the future. (If you're successful, they're only 1%. If you're not successful....)

Let's assume that success is 100k-1M paying customers.

Anything that gets in the way of someone being one of your first 1,000 paying customers is bad. Not telling the price upfront is one such thing. Trying to charge "market/what it's worth" is another.

Now is not the time to optimize pricing. In fact, you should tell the first 1-2% of paying customers that they will always and without any effort on their part get better pricing than anyone else going forward.

Yes, you should ask them what they think other people should/would pay....

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I appreciate that comment, thanks. It does feel a bit like a catch22, that I am definitely trying to solve.

ARGOS does have early paying customers, and of course they are heavily discounted (and they know).

You mention not telling a price is an issue (and so have others, point taken), but also say I shouldn't focus on price right now. I'm trying not to. So, what's your recommendation? Should I remove the page? Rename it to something like "Plans" and not "Pricing"? But then I'm still not telling you how much it will be. I know how to deal with this when talking to someone, but what I'd be really interested in what you would expect on a website, knowing what you told me.

Seriously, thanks!

Put low prices on the pricing page together with a note along the lines of "prices/terms are negotiable". That page should probably also mention that customers now will always pay less than later customers.

Be as friction-free as possible. When you talk with someone, ask if there is anything that would have helped. (The problem being that you want to hear from the folks who didn't talk with you.)

Note - while you want an interesting number of paying customers, you don't want any bad customers, where bad means "suck up a lot of time, provide no benefit."

Be flexible up to the point where you feel that you're being take-advantage of.

For example, if you're offering 15 days free and you're asked for 30, that's probably okay (and may be useful information telling you what you should offer). However, if someone demands 6-12 months, thank them and tell them to go elsewhere, nicely.

Thanks, those are great tips and I've just implemented some of those.

Thanks again, this is super helpful!

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