Life update

I have gone from developing software as an engineer to someone who develops software and talks to customers as a Product Lead.

Currently, I’m working on building the Gordian Network. The product places ads on travel websites. These ads are contextualized with your travel metadata.

As part of building this, I’m having more conversations with publishers (airlines, OTAs, etc.) and advertisers (a variety of travel companies). A framework that has become useful to me, suggested by a colleague at Gordian, is designing the product around price (see Monetizing Innovation).

Why design a product around price?

I had a belief the best way you build a product is (1) talk to customers (2) build it and (3) sell it. The Willingness To Pay (WTP) Framework demonstrates if you sell it after you build– the price is secondary concern. You’ll never be confident that you can make significant money off it.

In a WTP convo, the first step of talking to customers means doing the typical sales and product conversation, but also asking them (in subtle ways) how much they would pay for it.

Changing how structure conversation

The structure of my conversation used to be

1. Introductions
2. Learning more about their problem
3. Pitching a solution
4. Picking a random price out of the blue

However, I now am deliberate including willingness to pay within my conversations. The structure is now

1. Introductions
2. Learning more about their problem
3. Understanding how much they value their problem. 
4. Pitching a solution
5. Going through each feature asking about its importance
6. Setting expectations of what is reasonable, expensive, and prohibitive price

Pricing seems like an icky subject, but for a business, price is the indication of importance and value.