A B2B subscription startup · B2B · guest's previous startup
Lower the price to keep customers who are churning
Failed; maybe one extra month retained if they don't care about the product
Failedpricingretention
What they did
After raising B2B prices stepwise ($100, $200, $400 a month up to a couple thousand), churn appeared around $1,000/month and customers cited budget, so the price was dropped to retain them.
What happened
Did not drive meaningful retention; customers who don't value the product leave anyway
- Stage
- early
“making your price cheaper won't drive meaningful retention if people don't care about the product.”
“Maybe you retain them an extra month, but if they just don't care about your product, they're not going to stick around.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- ElevenReader: Sell hours of listening instead of AI credits, and drop a planCalled the app's biggest win of the year; no numbers shared
- ElevenLabs app: Offer one price in the mobile app and test offers around itKeeps pricing simple and the team accountable; no numbers shared
- ElevenReader: Keep tuning the onboarding quiz without testing a no-onboarding versionBiggest fail of the year; too many cycles spent on onboarding experiments
- ElevenReader: Cut onboarding down so people upload a book and pick a voice fastWorked better than quizzes and goal setting; no numbers shared
- ElevenLabs: Launch about once a month to earn press, then buy the brand searches it createsBelieved to lower CPA/CPI and compound across launches; never measured
- ElevenLabs: Write the launch Twitter thread first, then turn it into a video
- ElevenLabs app: Test new ads without needing week-one payback, reviewing each channel weekly
- ElevenLabs: Hire a creator on staff to film short videos for launches
- ElevenLabs app: Share UGC creators, tools and tracking setup across sibling apps
- ElevenLabs: Build separate apps for separate uses, each with its own brandWorked twice so far, per the speaker
- ElevenLabs app: Test paywall ideas in two sibling apps at once and swap notes
- ElevenLabs: Run the company as 10-12 small teams that each own design, build and growthSpeakers credit it for shipping speed; no numbers
- ElevenLabs: Hire engineers who build side projects, judged by their public GitHub
- ElevenLabs: Tell users how many hours their voice agents have run, so they share it
- ElevenReader: Watch Reddit, Discord and X for what people share, then push itUsers post screenshots of surprising voices; still iterating
- RevenueCat: Launch a mobile app with a home screen people want to screenshotAbout 100x more sightings on X overnight; mobile usage near dashboard usage
- Canva: Spin out a separate app for one use case of the main productWon Apple awards but failed on acquisition and retention; folded back in
- Canva: Plan a launch 12 months out, with 3 months on messaging