SaaStr Annual 2024: How to Leverage Pricing and Packaging to Drive Growth, Revenue and Profit with Miro, Splunk, Loom, and OpenAI

Pricing is a powerful tool for star-ups to user-growth, ARR and/or profitability. But many founders and investors feel they aren’t doing enough or the right things. The panelists for this session have been-there, and will talk about both, their top-recommendations for founders, and share learnings from being in the field (including some which are counterintuitive!).

1. How to Leverage Pricing and Packaging to Drive Growth, Revenue and Profit Akshay Sharma Head of Pricing & Monetization Miro Janie Lee Head of Product Loom Alison Harmon Head of Growth OpenAI Carsten Holm VP Pricing and Monetization Splunk

2. Pricing is another “product feature”

3. "Pricing" is more than the price level.. Price Level Value Metric (Seats v/s Usage?) Packaging Offering Types (Freemium?) T&C (Payment terms?) Published v/s "At request" pricing Flexible Licensing Programs Volume Discounts ...

4. ...and you can change... like you change product features Akshay's mental model : Adoption requires [ Perceived Benefit X Risk Discount ] [ Expected Costs X Pain Discount ] >>> How big is the benefit? How much do they trust it? Have others done this? What if this doesn’t work? What's the price? How hard is it to setup? Do many people need to adopt? How long till I see results? Directly influenced by Pricing

5. How to use pricing: 1. Identify desired outcome User growth Create low friction for adding more users 2. Optimize the pricing & packaging to achieve the outcome Profit growth New customer: Test higher prices w/o reducing conversions Revenue growth Options: a) Packaging change to  increase free -> paid b) Price increase c) Price decrease to increase adoption Existing customer: Grow account size Simplified examples

6. Example: Evolving pricing offer over time Ensure paid users realize value Win user-love (get to PMF) Initial days Maturing Product Scaling up Ensure paid users realize value Scale revenue in a healthy way Remove barriers for adoption (by small teams) Drive wide adoption Starter plan, minimum 5 users Starter plan, minimum 5 users Business plan, minimum 20 users Larger teams adopted Business Plan Starter plan, minimum 1 user Business plan, minimum 1 user Key metrics had positive impact

7. 2. Experimentation – when & how to do it

8. How to think through experimentation

9. Examples:

10. 3. Packaging & the right Price Level

11. Key Takeaways

12. Key Takeaways Identify desired outcome --> shape pricing to achieve it! And think about the next two steps if you can. Right value metric >> the right price Customer validation >> strategy Experiment regularly - learn from failures, do gradual roll-outs Price: Test, then set high and discount (easier than raising prices at-scale) Packaging: use for both upgrades AND customer segmentation [bonus] Find advisors who can help you see around the corner

13. UP NEXT: Building Products in the Age of AI Karan Anand President Brex Inc. Jen Taylor President Plaid Inc.