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09/06/2026 11:04 pm
TL;DR: Early-stage startups often guess pricing, yet 67% of founders admit they do so, while 40% plan to test new pricing models in 2024, according to Cerbos' pricing conversation with founders and investors. Pricing works best when it is treated as a living governance decision, tied to customer value, discovery, and repeatable iteration rather than a one-time launch choice.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Cerbos: customer discovery and pricing strategy for startups
By the numbers:
- 1,500 executives, founders, and leaders were surveyed across payments, finance, engineering, and product teams.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should startups use customer discovery to shape pricing?
A: Start by asking buyers what outcome they value, what problem they need solved, and what metric would fairly represent that value.
Q: Why do simple pricing models often work better early on?
A: Simple pricing reduces confusion while teams are still learning which customer segment, outcome, or usage pattern matters most.
Q: When should a startup change its pricing model?
A: A pricing model should change when the product starts serving different buyer segments, when the value metric no longer reflects customer usage, or when integrations and features materially change what customers buy.
Practitioner guidance
- Run pricing discovery alongside product discovery Ask buyers what outcome they value, what they would pay to solve it, and which metric best reflects that value.
- Test one clear pricing metric at a time Use a simple model first, then measure whether the chosen unit such as seats, usage, or workflows matches how customers perceive value.
- Review pricing whenever the product changes materially Revisit packaging after major feature changes, segment expansion, or shifts in customer behaviour.
What's in the full article
Cerbos' full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The founders' discussion on how they chose between flat-rate, usage-based, and freemium-style models as products matured.
- The customer-discovery questions they used to test willingness to pay and validate perceived value.
- The practical trade-offs behind limiting free-tier usage while keeping higher tiers simple to explain.
- The full transcript for teams that want the exact wording used in the pricing conversation.
👉 Read Cerbos' discussion on pricing strategy and customer discovery →
Pricing strategy and customer discovery: what startups miss?
Explore further
10/06/2026 1:17 am
Pricing strategy is an identity governance problem when the product mediates access, not just revenue. The article shows that founders are really deciding how value is observed, measured, and exchanged over time. In identity and security businesses, that same logic applies to how controls are bundled, metered, and adopted by different buyer groups. The practitioner lesson is that commercial design and governance design are often the same conversation in different language.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 67% of founders admit to guessing their pricing, according to The State of Secrets in AppSec.
- Only 44% of developers are reported to follow security best practices for secrets management, exposing a significant developer behaviour gap.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between pricing for usage and pricing for value?
A: Usage pricing charges for measurable consumption, while value pricing tries to align cost with the outcome the customer receives. They often overlap, but they are not the same. A usage metric can be easy to measure without reflecting value, so teams should choose the model that best matches how customers experience the benefit.
👉 Read our full editorial: Customer discovery and pricing strategy for early-stage startups
