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if I could build something and sell it to 25 people for either X or 2X, why would I build something I can only sell for X? It makes sense to go for the 2X, righ

if I could build something and sell it to 25 people for either X or 2X, why would I build something I can only sell for X? It makes sense to go for the 2X, right? Obviously, if you are presented with two options for things you can sell with similar ease to similar numbers of people, you should pick the higher priced one. But you don’t have another product like that, do you? You have this one. Why not try and sell this one, instead of worrying about some theoretical 2x alternative. If you find the 2x alternative, why waste your time with that when you could just find a 4x alternative and build that instead! The end of this road is obvious: just build something you can charge one customer $2k / month for. Presto!

elliotbnvl 6y ago
> But you don’t have another product like that, do you? You have this one. You're describing the sunk cost fallacy, and the beauty of having spent only three weeks on this idea is that I haven't sunk very much cost at all. I could very easily go for the one that makes 2X. > If you find the 2x alternative, why waste your time with that when you could just find a 4x alternative and build that instead! It's a sliding scale. The higher the price point, the longer the sales cycle. If you sell a $5 widget on your website, a consumer can buy that without a moment's thought. Selling a $100k/yr enterprise software subscription can take a year. Or two. And require having been in the industry for three or four or ten, as other folks in this thread have pointed out. My goal is to find the sweet spot between pricing my product so cheap that I can't consistently acquire enough customers on my self-funding budget and so expensive that the sales cycle is too long.
- ryanwaggoner 6y ago
  That's not the sunk cost fallacy unless sticking with it now is actually a bad idea. I don't think you have enough info to determine that, and it's a lot less work to do so than it is to build something else and validate it.

elliotbnvl 6y ago

> But you don’t have another product like that, do you? You have this one. You're describing the sunk cost fallacy, and the beauty of having spent only three weeks on this idea is that I haven't sunk very much cost at all. I could very easily go for the one that makes 2X. > If you find the 2x alternative, why waste your time with that when you could just find a 4x alternative and build that instead! It's a sliding scale. The higher the price point, the longer the sales cycle. If you sell a $5 widget on your website, a consumer can buy that without a moment's thought. Selling a $100k/yr enterprise software subscription can take a year. Or two. And require having been in the industry for three or four or ten, as other folks in this thread have pointed out. My goal is to find the sweet spot between pricing my product so cheap that I can't consistently acquire enough customers on my self-funding budget and so expensive that the sales cycle is too long.

ryanwaggoner 6y ago
That's not the sunk cost fallacy unless sticking with it now is actually a bad idea. I don't think you have enough info to determine that, and it's a lot less work to do so than it is to build something else and validate it.