Pricing your first SaaS tier — the 90-minute exercise

Most first-time SaaS founders set their first price by gut — usually too low — and then live with the consequences for a year. This exercise gets you to a defensible first price in 90 minutes, using nothing but a notebook and three customer conversations.

Step 1 — The 5-question customer interview (45 min total)

Talk to three potential customers who match your ICP. For each, ask:

1. What are you doing today to solve this problem? (Maps the alternative they'd use if you didn't exist.)
2. What does it cost you in time or money per month? (Anchors value in their world.)
3. If we did exactly this, what's the most you'd be comfortable paying per month? (The willingness-to-pay top-end.)
4. What's a price that would feel too cheap to take seriously? (The lower bound; cheaper than this signals "not for real businesses.")
5. Per user or per workspace or per usage — which would feel natural? (Surfaces the natural pricing axis.)

You're looking for the median of question 3 across the three conversations. That's your anchor price.

Step 2 — Shape the three tiers (20 min)

Three tiers, named simply: Starter / Pro / Business.

• Pro is your anchor price. Set it equal to the median willingness-to-pay from Step 1.
• Starter is roughly half of Pro. Strip features until that price is defensible — typically: lower seat limit, less usage, no integrations.
• Business is roughly 3-4x Pro. Adds: priority support, SSO, audit log, custom contract. You don't need to build all of this on day one; you need to be able to credibly offer it.

The trap: don't price Starter at "free" unless you have a strong product-led growth motion that requires it. Free-with-no-strategy bleeds support burden and tanks signal quality.

Step 3 — Build the price ladder (15 min)