A while back, I mentored a founder who reinforced something I had long believed. It’s something that’s easy to forget in boardrooms, pitch decks, and pricing strategy meetings.
This founder was on benefits. They were barely keeping up with rent. Heating was a sometimes luxury. But every month, without fail, they bought premium vitamin cocktails.
Why? Because those supplements helped them function. They gave them the energy and focus to keep building their startup, creating a better life for their family.
That purchase wasn’t logical in a spreadsheet sense. It wasn’t “affordable.” But it was essential to them.
And that’s the critical distinction too many founders and marketers overlook.
People Don’t Pay for What Something Is. They Pay for What It Makes Possible.
We obsess over features, price points, comparison tables, discounts, and tiers. We A/B test CTAs and adjust font sizes to nudge conversions. But strip all that back and here’s the truth:
If you’re solving a pressing, personal, painful problem, people will find a way to pay for it.
Even if they don’t “have the budget.” Even if they have to reshuffle priorities, delay something else, or stretch themselves.
What matters is how urgent the need feels and whether your product truly earns a place in their life.
“Too Expensive” Usually Means “Not Worth It to Me”
When someone says your price is too high, they’re not doing math. They’re saying:
- “I don’t see the value.”
- “I don’t believe this solves my problem.”
- “This doesn’t feel urgent or essential.”
That’s not a pricing problem. It’s a positioning problem. A messaging problem. A clarity problem.
The customer doesn’t care how many features you’ve built. They care about how those features transform something for them, emotionally or practically.
If you can’t explain that clearly, they’ll default to price.
Five Pricing Lessons for Founders
- Start with the real problem. Not what you think is valuable, but what your customers are trying to solve right now. What are they struggling with? What’s keeping them up at night?
- Sell the outcome, not the product. Don’t pitch vitamins: pitch clarity, resilience, energy, or peace of mind. People don’t buy products. They buy a better tomorrow.
- Don’t race to the bottom on price. If customers choose you just because you’re cheaper, they’ll leave when someone undercuts you. Compete on value, not cost.
- Respect how people make decisions. Pricing is rarely rational. It’s about emotion, tradeoffs, beliefs, and urgency. A product that feels “expensive” one week can become “a no-brainer” the next, if the pain becomes acute enough.
- Empathise, don’t judge. The founder I mentioned didn’t need a discount. They needed something that worked. And they were willing to make sacrifices for it.
You’re Not Selling to Everyone. And You Don’t Need To.
The right customers will stretch for the right solution. They’ll make it fit. They’ll defend it to their family or their CFO. They’ll invest, not because it’s affordable, but because it’s worth it.
So the next time someone tells you your price is too high, pause before you slash it.
Ask yourself instead:
Have I really shown them what this makes possible?
If the answer’s no, fix that first.
Ultimately, price is just a number. Value is the story you’re telling.
One caveat! Are you truly delivering value?
You can’t wrap “average” in a great story and expect premium pricing to stick. You can’t apply value-based pricing to a product you built a decade ago and never evolved. Not if the world and your customers have moved on.
Value is earned, not assumed.
You don’t need to reinvent paracetamol. But unless you’ve created something that solves a specific pain in a better way, there’s a ceiling on what you can charge or a strip of paracetamol.
Premium pricing belongs to products that feel current, relevant, and sharply aligned with what your customers need today.
So yes, sell the outcome. But make damn sure you can deliver it.